
Class 

Book 

CoiPglitN?. 



CfOBKRIGHT DEPOSm 



This Edition, printed by tl\e 

ffictoxBton Jlautttal PtieaB 

is limited to fifteen, hundred 
copies, eakch signed by the 
Author, of ■which this is 

No. 



Copyright 
1921 
A. G. 



DEC -5 1921 






^C1.A630815 



Snnotntmn 

2Iet tto one sag tl|at ttjia houk aako from tl|E 
reader more tl|an it merits. 3lt is a roUcctiott of 
familiar essays, one of mljiclj Ijas been publisl|eb, 
eacl| bay, for four gears in tl|e newspaper of mljiclj 
tljc mriter is tl|e eMtor. QJlje subjects are all next 
boor to eacl| of us. ^urlj morals are bramn as seem 
appurtenant. 3f no moral be inbicateb, tl|e reader 
mag perl)aps finb one in tl|e text ; anb sometimes 
tl|ere mag be no moral at all — onlg a smile or tl|e 
reoinal of a latent memorg. 

3ack in tlje Pulpit is a mobest flomer tl|at groms 
in tl|e beeper moobs. 2lt is loueb bg cl|ilbren. Ue 
useb to Ijunt it out anb make tl]e little preacl|er bom 
anb speak l|is piere mljile tlje sunligl|t playeb in ttje 
trees anb tl|e summer mas brigl|t anb gag. 

(5l|is is tl|e plan of tljis collection of essags. 3t 
Ijas no notion of preacljing except as one loues anb 
loses l|imself in tl|e subverts treateb, tl|e scenes belin- 
eateb anb tl|e memories reuioeb. Anb mljen one gets 
to tljat point in mriting, l|e neeb not preacl| at all. 

Artljur (^. B'taples 



OJnntenta 



Chapter Page 

On "The Inflcknzy" 3 

On "Bends in Rivers" 5 

On "The Marks on the Door Jamb'' 7 

On"Yotjth" 10 

On "Pumps — Especially Chain-pumps " 13 

On "Thanksgiving Days".„ 16 

On "Reading Aloud".... 19 

On "Old Time Torchlight Processions" 25 

On "My Aunt's Millinery Shop" 28 

On "A Ride to Bath" 31 

On "The Qualms of Golf" 36 

On "Stilts" 38 

On "My Best Umbrella" 41 

On "A Sermon on the Seed" 44 

On "The First Frosts" 47 

On "An Old Baseball Story" 50 

On "Your First Trousers" 53 

On "The Spectres in Our Path" 56 

On "Co-operation After a Fashion" 59 

On "Having Nothing To Do" 62 

On "Some Old Newspapers" 65 

On "Back to the Old School" 68 

On "Spring and Daisies" 71 

On "Peonies" 74 

On "The Value of Character" 77 

On "The Little Village" 80 

On "A Personal Matter" 83 

On "The Etiquette of Sv/immin" 85 

On "Going Berrying" 88 

On "The Old Peddler's Cart" 91 

On "The Vagabond" 94 

On "My First Jackknife" 97 

On "Old Time Breaking Out op the Roads" 100 



xiv CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

On "When the Minister Came" 103 

On "The Pussy Willow" 106 

On "Carving One's First Turkey" 109 

On "Abraham and Lot" 112 

On "The Old Brick Oven"..._ 115 

On "A Little Buck Up Story" 118 

On "Noah" 121 

On "The Elm Tree" 124 

On "How I Tired of Farming" 127 

On "The Smell op a Brush Fire" 130 

On "Ghosts and Such" 133 

On "Church Dinners" 136 

On "The Crows in the Sky" 139 

On "Driving Home the Cow" 142 

On "Last Days of School" 145 

On "Old Maids" 148 

On "Camp Fires" 151 

On "Going to the Movies" 154 

On "Prodigies" 157 

On "Certain Noises".— 160 

On "Graves by the River" 162 

On "Grandfather's Clocks" 165 

On " Sopsey- Vines " 168 

On "An Old Notion of War's Ending" 171 

On "What Our Fathers Read" 174 

On "The Sleeping Child" 178 

On "The Cavern of the Snail" 181 

On "Fall Pickling" 184 

On "Woodland Pools" 187 

On "Amiability at Home" 190 

On "A Woman Hanging Out the Clothes" 193 

On "The Clam" 195 

On "Sand" 198 

On "Forming One's Personality" 201 

On "Grannie" 204 

On "Helping the Boy" 207 

On "Shadows" 210 

On "The Lesson in the Rainbow" 213 

On "Hair and Heads" 216 



CONTENTS XV 

Chapter Page 

On "A Talk to Children of All Ages" 219 

On "Race Suicide" 222 

On "Clearing Off After Storms" 225 

On "Reforming as a Business" 228 

On "Resourcefulness" 231 

On "Woodchucking" 234 

On "Having the Lumbago" 237 

On "Faces Waiting at the Window" 240 

On "Advice to Reporters" 243 

On "Eating Yeast" 246 

On "The Maine of 100 Years" 248 

On "Sap-boiling Time" 251 

On "The First Crow" 254 

On "Going to Sunday School" 257 

On "The Chimney Corner" 261 

On "Sulphurandmolasses" 264 

On "Having a System" 267 

On "An Old Text" 270 

On "Ribbon Grass" 273 

On "My Alarm Clock" 276 

On "Autumn in the Cellar" 279 

On "Riding in Smoking Cars" 282 

On "Cobwebs" 285 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 




ON "THE INFLUENZY" 

OC'S been here agen terday! Seem's ez ef he 
come ter say "How yer gettin' on terday?" 
lookin' at me where I lay. 

I ain't talkin' over much; ain't no need 
ter air my lore. Eyes a burnin' where they 
be; ears a bustin' with a roar; mouth thet's 
like a shingle-mill; dry's the handle of a pump; back 
that's broke square in two 'bout four inches 'bove the 
rump ! So I ain't so long on talk. Got no answer fer 
the doc! 

Doc don't seem ter mind me none; sets around a 
little bit ; pulls a little dictaphone ; lays it on my kroop- 
er-bone; makes me breathe and holler "A-a-ah"; 
breathe an' intake ; breathe an' groan through his little 
dictaphone. 

Sez he after quite a spell, "Them Bolsheveeks is 
raisin' hell! D'yer think ol' Wilson's doin' well?" 
Takes my temperatoor agen; thumps me on the abdo- 
men. "Think it's goin' ter snow agen?" 

But I don't want no casual chat. I don't call no doc, 
fer that. Got no call for Bolsheveeks, fer at least a 
couple er weeks ! Don't keer ef it snows an' snows ef 
I could only blow my nose ! I want facks ! Right off 'n 
the bat! I don't want no social chat! Ef I'm wusn't 
what I wuz, what's the reason; what's the cause? 
What's the status of the case ; tell the facks right to my 
face; lemme know the wust and best; is my innards 
all congessed ; are there bones loose in my pate ; is my 
backbone dislocate; ef I ain't got no temperatoor an' 
no disease fer sure, what in time's ther howdydoo ef 
'tain't the pip and 'tain't the flu? 



4 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Doc he sets around a bit. "Man !" says he, "you're 
lookin' fit ! Have you fightin' Dempsey yit." 

Then I looks doc in the eye : "Tie the bull outside," 
says I. "Doc, I bleeve I'm goin' ter die. I'm dead now 
above my chin ! Eyes and nose and ears all in ! Ain't 
breathed reglar fer a week! Jints all movin' with a 
squeak. Every time I move my jaw, feel's ez though 
I'd broke the law. Doc," says I, "it's up ter you ! Ef 
faint the pip and 'tain't the flu how yer goin' ter pull 
me through?" 

Doc he sets an' thinks er while ; then he answers with 
a smile, "Aint you the chap wrote a talk, couldn't eat 
and couldn't walk, waitin' fer the birds to sing, an' the 
comin' of the spring ; wanted to loaf by a larfin' stream, 
set an' fish an' fish an' dream, nuthin' but bees an' bugs 
an' things, thet live right where the wild stream sings. 
Maybe that ain't jest carreck, but sumthin' at least to 
that effeck." An' the doc he opens a bag he lugs. 
"What you need," sez he, "is a dose of bugs." 

An' sure enough I'm gettin' well ; ain't felt so peart 
for quite a spell. Wuz over a billion bugs, they say, in 
the shot doc gimme the other day. Reely feel I'm 
comin' to ; 'tain't the pip an' 'tain't the flu ; but jest er 
case where all I need is sumthin' off'n the flowery mead, 
an' when you can't inject the Spring nor a dose of blue- 
bird on the wing, nor brooks that run, ner vi'lets blue 
ter cure the pip er cure the flu, why! the next best 
thing the doctor lugs is a shot of erbout a billion bugs. 
An' as they sort o' crawl eround, I can somehow feel 
I'm on the ground, with all the rest that my fancy hugs, 
the birds an' the bees an' the billion bugs. 




ON "BENDS IN RIVERS" 

E SEEMS there are dreams and strange fan- 
tasies in them; drifting into Elysium; the 
coming suddenly upon new countries, explor- 
ation and achievement — all in the bends of 
calm rivers in June. 

I see them as we ride by them this dawn 
of a motionless day, no wind whatever and this river of 
ours as still and silent as though it were viscid. They 
are, perhaps, the most inviting things in the world. 
This river could not be more enticing were it the Congo 
or the Amazon. I watch it from the car windows and 
wish I could pass by these bends of rivers and study 
their shores as terra incognita. 

There is something in still waters in June and pad- 
dling on them, especially around the bendings of wind- 
ing streams, that attracts every person. We read tales 
of explorers. No book more fascinating than "West- 
ward Ho," with its adventure. And of all adventure 
nothing like adventuring up new and great rivers. 
And it is always the lure of what is beyond the bend. 
Mystery lies there. What strange monsters, what beast 
or bird or what manner of fish be just around the bend, 
all these are the lure that makes the bendings of rivers 
so alluring. 

This morning the river mirrored every tree. The 
sky floated in it. The shore boulders, the ferns, the 
spruces — all rested on the surface. It seemed as 
though never before did this river meander as today. 
It stretched like a silver thread from town to town and 
around tiny islands and into bayous and odd retreats. 
The thought was not original with me, that we would 
like to drift around the bends in the river. Others 



6 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

suggested it ; so that it must be a very general senti- 
ment — a natural emotional attitude of man — this de- 
sire to follow rivers; to drift around their bendings; 
to see what lies beyond. 

The very obvious suggestion is that this is the way 
in life. I might make a commonplace application of 
the thought; but I will not weary you. My thought* 
as I press my face against the windows of the railroad 
train and see this absolutely placid river is not solely 
moral. It is rather emotional and aesthetic. I can't 
tell you why it makes me sad for departed youth, for 
Junes long past. I cannot tell you why, as I close my 
eyes, I seem barefoot, alone, running through brambles 
to the river or the brook, a young explorer. I cannot 
tell you why my mind encompasses the years, as the 
day encompasses my experience since then, and I see 
the reaches of men's coming and going and see tides 
broiling, sea-gulls flying, tall ships moving and long, 
wide bays suddenly breaking upon my view. 

We New Englanders have no conception of what we 
owe to the lakes, ponds, streams, estuaries of our na- 
tive domain. We have but to go into the inland, where 
sluggish rivers move if at all, dark and discolored, and 
where there are no clear- water lakes or ponds like those 
that we have here by the thousands. No wonder that 
a Maine river in June attracts even us. No wonder 
that we long for them when away ; dream of them by 
night and in half waking hours float around their bend- 
ings and see new lands as they come to view. The 
Lord was very kind when He made New England 
rivers. Never straight, never severe, but always sin- 
uous, curved, in lines of beauty and always appealing 
to our sense of mystery. The Lord is very good in 
making us desire to see what is beyond the river bend. 



ON "THE MARKS ON THE 
DOOR- JAMB" 




VERY New Year at least, they used to measure 
little boys to see how much they had grown 
in the past twelve months. On the old door- 
jamb in the kitchen or on some smooth 
boarded place therein, were the marks of the 
growth of children, pathetic reminders of 
passing youth and coming years and records to linger 
over of what has been but may never be any more. 

I recall the ceremony. "Come, sonny," said dad, 
"stand up here and let us see where all this good food 
has gone to. Let's see how much more boy we've got 
this year than we had last." And so we toddled over 
to the appointed place all marked up with records of 
previous growers of our family and at the place 
marked with my initials I stood while the blade of a 
case-knife was laid along the top of my little frowsly 
head and the scratch was made in the paint that 
marked my new height in the world of little men. 
I can see dad now as he gave a mighty jab of the 
handle of the knife so that the dull blade sank into the 
wood and left the records of the day thereon. And 
then it was dated and measured and left for the ages. 
I think that maybe there are such records now- 
adays, but I doubt it. I have asked several persons if 
they have any such memory arid they have not recalled 
any. But I have them and I can see the row of 
scratches on the door- jamb in the old kitchen and can 
still marvel at the monstrous climb of the marks of 
the passing years toward altitude of senescence. Some 
such marks stopped and never went on. In one family 



8 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

that I used to visit there were several boys and girls 
and among them was the record of growth of a boy 
who was drowned and whom we all saw dragged out 
of the water one evening in summer and with whose 
brother I went home, wondering as he sobbed. I can 
fancy mothers looking at these marks as they scrubbed 
the door-way paint and pausing to think of the little 
babies, the chubby boys and the romping girls. Noth- 
ing that the mother would not rather yield up to time 
than the growth of her babies. Often mothers would 
tie them to their breasts and under their breasts for 
all time if they could, and yet the toil is so great ! But 
wee children about the house make it full of joy, and 
when they are gone the house is full of ghosts of 
flying forms that are no more even tho they live in 
name. 

I recall, however, peculiar pride in the evidences 
of growth, possibly because they were so few. I recall 
well — and it is a story I often tell to little folks — of 
the times when I used to go to visit my grandfather 
at the farm, he would call me over to weigh me. The 
only scales were a set of long steelyards with a heavy, 
sliding weight on them that would go rippling down 
the notches if a boy tried to handle them. They were 
used to weigh everything from the pig to the carpet- 
rags. They were like those the tin-peddler used in 
his negotiations of such lengthy concern and so potent 
in results as to domestic peace. Mother was very 
particular not to let the peddler get the better of her 
trade and usually needed a good deal of bolstering 
afterwards to calm her doubts. 

Grandfather would call me over and grandmother 
would suggest that the "little creeter" be fed up a bit 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 9 

before "Pa" weighed him or he might not start the 
steelyards at all. He used to tie a piece of broom- 
stick firmly into the hook of the steelyards and call me 
to grab the stick, and then with a swing off the floor 
in his strong old arms I would float in the air like a 
sparerib and they would gather around and discuss 
the quarters of pounds or the balance of the steelyards 
while I hung there in mid-air. I remember but one 
weight that was recorded in connection with this and 
I think it rather curious as a common theme, that this 
figure should endure; for it must have been a good 
many years ago. That weight was thirty-five pounds. 
I was very proud of that thirty-five pounds. I reck- 
oned it was thirty-five pounds of good fighting weight ; 
for that was what I was advised that it was by my 
grandfather on the side as we talked it over subse- 
quently in the barn after he had done his chores and 
we stood a while to talk it over as to the prospects of 
a boy's behavior for the coming summer. 

I would like to know what those marks on the door- 
jambs, what those fugitive weights of small boys 
really are. I have speculated before on what becomes 
of the boy and what bourne receives the boy-soul and 
the little girl soul and what is I and what was that 
little boy that once was I and what the distance 
between the marks on the door- jamb really amount to 
in our lives. They are gone, those years and that 
growth, and yet not gone. And if gone, where ? And if 
not gone, what of the boy or girl that once was you? 
Tell me these things and I'll tell you about our growth 
into Heaven. 




ON "YOUTH" 

ECENTLY at a wedding in one of the loveliest 
colonial houses in New England the wedding 
party sat about the table in the dining room 
toasting the bride. 

The day was fair and the colors of the 
wedding gaiety were those of autumn. I am 
not very good on naming colors but these were ruddy 
and deep-toned like those of gardens of autumn by the 
sea, where the colors are always more intense and 
vivid. The bridesmaids, twelve or more, were like the 
flaming bush. And the bride was like the picture that 
I used to see in Grimm's Fairy Tales — the Sleeping 
Princess just as she had come wide awake and all of 
the castle had awakened, from the princess to the boy 
who had fallen asleep, turning the spit, in the great 
kitchen. Here in this colonial dining room deep, long 
and high, were festoons of color and festival array, in 
the middle of which arose from the table the wedding 
cake all silvery white like the crest of the Himalayas. 
It was difficult to get into the room, so many had 
crowded in to see the ceremony of toasting the bride — 
and yet the entrance thereto was limited to the younger 
set. There were many ushers, and the best man, and 
the bridegroom and some of the young friends of all 
of them. I, being of gray hair, stood outside and looked 
in with a lot of other gray-beards who saw and thought. 
Over in the farther end of the room the doors were 
guarded by two handsome matrons in gowns whose 
colors were foils to each other and they stood with 
their backs to the wall, one on each side of the portal, 
like warders at the entrance to the Tower of London, 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 11 

and somehow fitted into the picture as tho it had been 
arranged by a Belasco. 

Toasting the bride is lovely as a spectacle. There 
was a background of young college men — and they 
sang songs of Old Eli. Crowding around the bridal 
party they lifted their glasses — I don't know with what 
the glasses were filled, for in this day of near-drinks, 
I am a poor judge of distance — but the glasses shone 
and the ceremony looked like pictures that I have seen 
of "Enter the King." Hymen was the king that day 
and I saw it all with some thought of things that I am 
hoping to express. 

Near me were two of my old school teachers. One 
was 84 years old, a teacher of my boyhood in Bath, 
Maine. The other is equally along in years and both 
of them endowed with minds as keen as ever and with 
a spirituality that has sweetened and refined with the 
passing of the years. 

I leave the contrast to you. Outside the door — age ! 
Inside the door — "Youth." And I said : "I wish I were 
an artist and were commissioned to paint a gay pic- 
ture of Youth. Here I would have my model. The 
straining eyes of age outside the doors looking in on 
this picture seen thru the streaming light of the No- 
vember sun with all of its color and joyousness. The 
flowers, the wedding finery, the lovely maidens, the 
gallant boys, the songs of college, the glasses lifted 
high, the wedding-cake silvered and uncut, the matrons 
at the door, the mother in the background, so tenderly 
considerate of parental giving; so hopeful of the fu- 
ture; so traditional of the past. 

Youth! Well, it comes and it goes and it leaves 
stranded on the shoals of time everything save two ele- 
ments supreme — the spirit and the memories. Love 



12 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

endureth and the spirit grows greater with the years. 
Time is — and very little else is. And youth recreates 
itself and age passes out of the presence of the festival 
and stands outside. And yet age revels in youth as in 
nothing else and determines that it shall have its day. 

In the eyes of my two old ladies there were tears, 
not of sadness but of participation. Probably they, too, 
will carry long with them to the last the picture of the 
open room and Youth triumphant. To me it always 
incarnates the spirit of life itself, the coming, the go- 
ing of that endless procession. 

"With firm, regular step," says Walt Whitman, 
"they wend — they never stop, successions of men, one 
generation playing its part and passing on; another 
generation playing its part and passing on in its turn, 
with faces turned towards me to listen; with eyes 
retrospective toward me." Yes, Youth. And never 
shall I forget the scene so full of it, so incomparably 
beautiful in its loveliness and innocence. 




ON "PUMPS— ESPECIALLY 
CHAIN-PUMPS" 

nUMPS are several kinds, chain-pumps, blue- 
pumps, kitchen-pumps, detectives and 
dancing. 

When the ark leaked on its first voyage, 
there was no pump on hand, so the elephant 
put into use the original pump and kept the 
ark dry. He could suck the water out of the hold and 
squirt it out of the window. There is no mention of the 
pump in Scripture. The Red Sea was parted by the 
wind; not pumped dry by Moses. All kinds of ship- 
wreck occur in the biblical tales but no evidence that 
the pump was used to amuse the sailors while they 
drowned. 

The first historical account of a pump is Hero's ac- 
count of the force pump of Ctesibusus of Alexandria. 
That is as far as I am going into the history of the 
pump. I never liked the pump anyivay. I remember 
the days of the old chain-pump, when the efforts of a 
person in getting water enough to wash his face as far 
as his ears in the frosty morning could be heard sev- 
eral miles. I have gone out to the slippery well-curb, 
where a chain pump lay in wait for the unwary with a 
mound of gleaming ice spreading over the territory, 
and I have had the most terrible conflicts with that 
pump that I ever had with any animate or inanimate 
object in my life. In the first place it would be frozen 
up tighter than a mill-pond. Then the well would be 
frozen over. And then the chain would be frozen and 
then my ears would be frozen, and then, every time I 



14 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

tried to turn the crank, my hands would freeze to the 
handle and then I would slip and turn a double-somer- 
sault on the well-curb and loop up over the pump and 
get mixed into the chain and get my hair frozen into 
the atmosphere and fall down the well and cut my lip 
on the pail and possibly lose my temper. 

Of all of the cursed-looking insignificant instru- 
ments of Satan a chain-pump in winter had them all 
skun to a bare fact. You had to thaw it out with hot 
water first. I have spent years of my valuable time as 
a boy thawing out chain-pumps. They would freeze 
even in summer. The only night of the year when I 
felt reasonably sure that our chain-pump would not 
freeze, was the night before the Fourth of July and 
possibly one or two sultry nights in summer when we 
boys slept, in puris naturalibus, in the old open attic 
and heard the crickets sweating blood outdoors. There 
WERE a few of those hot nights as I recall in which 
the chain-pump only just skimmed over and we could 
easily break the ice on the August morning. 

After you had thawed out a chain-pump, the next 
thing was to induce it by muscular artifice to give up 
well-water. It had a way of pulling the water part way 
up and then sticking just there. You wound and you 
wound ; you speeded up ; you threw off your outer vest- 
ments; your tongue began to hang out; your head 
began to buzz ; your breath began to come in knicker- 
bockers ; you tore at the job ; the well began to tremble ; 
the pump began to dance over the premises, and just as 
the water was beginning to flow out of the spout into 
the pail amid the terrifying racket, why — you slipped 
on the ice or your wind gave out and you had to begin 
all over again. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 15 

Another pleasant habit of a chain-pump was to ar- 
rive at the point of delivering water and then break 
the chain. I suppose I have fished more hours for a 
chain in a well than any other one thing I ever did as a 
boy. You know that a chain-pump is made of a chain — 
thank heaven, they are now obsolete — that ran over a 
sprocket and up through a spout that just about fitted 
the chain. The agitation of the sprocket by a boy was 
supposed to be sufficient to induce the water to come 
up and flow. If you broke the chain — well, I don't care 
to talk about it. I have fished for well-chains on days 
when there was perfectly good fish-fishing, and I don't 
care to endanger my present good disposition by re- 
curring to it. I am going to leave the chain in the well 
today. 

Of course this world is one of progress. I have 
been saying that for some years. I never am so con- 
vinced of it as I am every time I turn a faucet and con- 
sider how different it is from a chain-pump or even 
an old-fashioned pumpkin-wood pump. We always 
painted the pump blue! Every farmer boy was long 
on blue paint. I never knew why blue paint was so 
plentiful in childhood. Red paint has been dear enough 
since; but blue paint! We had slathers of it and we 
loved to paint. We painted the barn-doors, the front 
steps, the clothes reel, the fence, the pump, the rooster 
on the weather vane, the rain-water barrel by the back- 
door, the roll-way doors to the cellar-way, the back- 
door, the pig-pen, the hen-coop and the dog-house — all 
blue. Bright blue, too. But I don't know that it ever 
made me care any more fondly for the pump than 
usual. I remember the distance it stood from the even- 
ing fire; the cold pathway; the slipperiness of its ap- 
proach; the racking pull on a boy's arms. 




16 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Yea! Verily! The world is easier for boys, now. 
What would Percival say now to going to the pump for 
all of the water! But just the same, there was a tri- 
umph in getting the better of a chain-pump that noth- 
ing else can equal. Verily, the chief joy of life is in 
accomplishment and the greatest happiness is in work. 



ON "THANKSGIVING DAYS" 

p OMEHOW, every time I think of Thanksgiving 
days, I see an old-fashioned country dooryard, 
with a single wheel rut in it, marking the 
passage of the family wagon over the new- 
fallen snow. And standing in the door is a 
woman in an apron, the apron folded up over 
her bare arms, and looking off over the white hills. If 
I were drawing a picture of Thanksgiving, it would be 
that — ^mother in the doorway waiting for the boy from 
town. 

I would step in with you for a time as she closes 
the door and we shall see the house and smell the din- 
ner. It has been furbished up as well as it ever could 
be, as clean as mother alone could make it; and every 
tidy on the chairs and every pillow on the beds, and 
every hair-cloth chair in the parlor is as straight as 
her hands could make it. The yellow kitchen floor 
shines and the old clock ticking resolutely on and on, 
in the corner, has a clean if battered face and no need 
to hide behind its hands. The light of the Thanks- 
giving Day sun falls on the floor and makes squares of 
light from the window panes. The cat sleeps on the 
braided rug by the kitchen stove. Things are going 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 17 

well. The turkey is doing nicely and is being basted 
with regularity; for mother has nothing more to do 
than to wait nervously and watch with infinite care lest 
things go wrong. Every time the oven-door is opened, 
the steam comes out and makes a savor that defies the 
art of Savarin. The pantry has bubbling pies of mince 
on the dressers. The table has an unaccustomed white 
hnen cloth already placed. The best pickle jar is in 
the center and the best castor near at hand. And what 
is that? The silver butter dish, by all that is holy! 
Mother looks at it fondly and believes that she will 
even get out her best napkins. Yes, by Jupiter, she 
will and does; and even so with a look of determina- 
tion and a smile of mischief she cuts loose with the best 
the family has or ever expects to have. What is the 
use of living if you cannot do a few extras on Thanks- 
giving? Why be eternally keeping the best for the 
minister? 

How slowly the clock ticks ! How calmly and irre- 
vocably Time does have its way! Again and again 
mother goes to the xvindow and looks down the quiet 
country road. It turns just at the bottom of the hill 
toward the "Corner" where Father went to the store 
and thence to the station for the incoming train. It is 
four miles away from the turn in the road. The Wil- 
sons are expecting "folks." Their chimney smokes 
beatifically into the sunlit skies this Thanksgiving Day. 
She sees Father in the old wagon, driving slowly 
through this early snow, with a happy look on his face 
and her heart warms to him and she fancies things of 
youth about him and remembers all of the other 
Thanksgiving Days that they have had here when the 
children were at home. 




18 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

And so she goes back and busies herself and looks 
at herself in the looking-glass and opens the oven-door 
and turns the turkey around in the baking pan and 
gives it a chance for a little extra brown. This is all 
a part of giving thanks — this infinite care as to the 
nicety of the dinner. It is all that she can do, by the 
way. And yet Father considers that all of this must 
be very trifling to the son who has been living in a 
great city. But maybe mother knows quite as well 
as he. 

I can hear the wheels coming far down the road, 
and can even hear the conversation between the man 
and the son. Maybe mother can hear it, or could hear 
it, if her heart were not beating so wildly. She will 
hardly go to the window ; she will hardly go to the door. 
Perhaps he rather see her just as he used to see her, 
when he was a little boy — ^just busy about the kitchen 
and all seeming so homelike. And so! the door opens 
with a rush of eager air and a boy springs into the 
room and the cat jumps from the braided rug and the 
old clock ticks a bit louder or seems to halt, and father 
stands in the doorway with an expectant and proud 
look and the little mother is enfolded in the strong 
young arms and her head goes to its haven where it 
has longed to be and he says "Little Mamma" and they 
wipe away the tears of joy. That's Thanksgiving. 

And that's what makes this old world go along! 
Nothing else but this eager hunger for the love of our 
own, the happiness of our own, the uprightness and the 
constancy of our own. And any boy or girl who can 
come home to that kitchen fireside and be proud of it ; 
and who can look into the mother's eyes and not flinch, 
has cause to lift his heart in thanks to Him from whom 
floweth all mercy and all thanksgiving. 




ON "READING ALOUD" 

ITERATURE began before books were printed. 
The Arabian Nights are a collection of tales 
told around the evening camp fire in the 
deserts and handed down by tale-tellers. 
Homer was brought along by men who recited 
it in the original Greek with indescribable 
grandeur. People thus cultivated the art of listening, 
which is rapidly passing. The speaking stage has be- 
gun to go and people gather in darkened houses to see. 
They are not so inclined to hear. It is almost an insult 
in the average family to ask the young people to listen 
to the reading of anything. They begin to yawn and 
look about for escape. It usually comes by the way of 
the telephone which jangles its rude interruptions and 
the doorbell that admits the caller uninvited. 

I would advocate the return to the old habit of read- 
ing aloud. I find in daily life that there is a very great 
decline in the art of direct expression. Fewer people 
are able today to tell a story simply and directly. 
Schools of salesmanship are instituted to teach sales- 
men how to sell goods. I saw in a Boston bookseller's, 
Wednesday, three samples of conversations that the 
salesmen were to use in selling a set of the works of 
Jules Verne. I was asked to read them to give my 
opinion as to which were the better. It seemed incon- 
ceivable that the booksellers should take this care to 
teach men what to say ; to have them learn it by rote. 
I chose the shorter. 

No other means, equal to reading aloud, is at hand 
to teach a person expression and speech. It is aston- 
ishing what definite progress can be made in a short 



20 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

time by the cultivation of this family practice. I recall 
that John Stuart Mill, who was educated by his father 
and who never went to school as a boy until he went 
away to the Paris Sorbonne, was educated by reading 
aloud chiefly. You may ask if John Stuart Mill came 
to know anything by this method, and I will say he was 
the most astonishing prodigy of all history. He did 
not know at the age of fourteen that he was better edu- 
cated than other boys, so simply had the process come 
about, but he had all of the knowledge of books that 
the average person of fifty years could have, speak- 
ing and reading all languages, all classics, all as well as 
his own native English. We may teach children the 
most wonderful of things by setting aside a certain por- 
tion of each day or week for reading aloud. 

Interruptions ! I have already spoken of them and 
it is not easy to shut off the telephone talker on the 
other end, with the usual lot of unnecessary verbiage 
at his command. But it can be done — if one will be 
firm and respectful. Much depends on the time and 
the place. Some places in some houses lend themselves 
to reading. There are quiet nooks where you may find 
the atmosphere essential to reading aloud. The book 
is your own business, but I would not read cheap fic- 
tion or useless matter. I would follow the line of good 
reading or not at all. It must be interesting, connected, 
engrossing as may be. Reading of fiction is the most 
satisfactory and I will defy any person to follow the 
habit of reading aloud and not find speedily that his 
speech is clearer, his voice more elastic and musical; 
his power to hold an audience if he ever desires to do 
any public speaking, more certain ; his appreciation of 
polite and agreeable phrase more keen. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 21 

You say this is all very well. This is not my busi- 
ness. But it happens to be your business. Every man 
is a salesman. He is selling himself to the public. It 
matters not what his vocation, if he can talk accu- 
rately, express himself clearly, use decent English, talk 
rationally without slang and without the use of phrases 
that mean nothing and are of no strength to his story, 
he will go farther and do better even if his present 
occupation be digging in the ditch. 

One of the best talkers that I ever heard is a shoe- 
maker in one of our shops. He comes in here occa- 
sionally. He is a most conclusive and able talker. I 
asked him if he did not read aloud evenings and Sun- 
days to his family. Said he, "That's the way I have 
learned all I know. We read aloud in my household 
nearly every evening. I take the children young and 
bring them up that way and we all take our turns 
at it." 

I do not know how much reading is taught in schools 
now. I have no interest in elocution as such, in this 
comment— excellent as it may be. This is a plea for 
the direction of reading in households by those who 
have a concern for the proper education of all. Reading 
aloud is almost a lost art. It should be restored. 




ON "OLD LADIES WITH 
SWEET FACES" 

NE OF THEM came in the other day to see me 
and tell me some things that I should know 
and I was pleased to sit at her feet, as one sat 
in days of old at the feet of Gamaliel. 

I know of nothing lovelier than an old lady 
with a sweet face. Some of them yet retain 
the flush of color in their cheeks, the dancing light in 
their eyes, the subtle humor of experience in their talk 
and the gentleness of the Kingdom of God in their atti- 
tude. And some are wrinkled, alas! and have hard 
hands creased by work ; and yet, if there is the look of 
sweetness in the eyes and in the face, all is again love- 
liness. 

I reckon that if you have any sentiment in your 
souls there is some dear old lady whom these words 
call again back to you as you read. She may have 
passed on but she yet peoples your mind. She sits by 
some window sewing ; she tells little children her quaint 
old tales; she sits silent and dreamful looking out on 
the familiar scenes. She is there — all of the time. 

This dear old lady with the sweet face came in to 
see me the other day because she said that she wanted 
to see how the chap looked that wrote a piece that she 
had read about "Youth." We had the nicest time that 
you ever saw and, when she went away, she said, "I 
must not talk to you any more of these old-time things 
or you will be putting me in the paper." 

Said I, "I wish I could put into the paper, not what 
you said but what you mothers of mothers of mothers, 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 23 

typify. You are a great, great grandmother — as you 
have said. I wish I could put what that means into a 
newspaper." I wish I could impress on all this world 
what it means to embody motherhood through the gen- 
erations — mother to one's own, mother to one's daugh- 
ter's or one's son's own ; mother, then, to the sons and 
daughters of their children. I wish I could tell the 
\world what triviality there is in all of this fol-de-rol 
of ill-considered reform work, of half-baked Ameri- 
canization schemes, of these costly systems to bring 
Utopias by revolutions and force-majeure, when all 
that is needed is a succession of good mothers, teach- 
ing children good things at their knees — and I care not 
in what language it is taught, by what religion it is 
measured, under what flag it is folded, so long as moth- 
erhood is sweet and good and childhood goes the way 
of the street called straight. O ! You can't make every- 
one over to suit your pattern. You and I don't wear 
the same size breeches or the same cut of coat nor do 
we like the same sort of food ; but if we like the same 
sort of a God, the same sort of humanity, the same 
sort of heaven on earth and have the same sort of an 
appreciation of love of neighbor and kindness to all 
men and women, good or bad, rich or poor, we shall be 
bringing motherhood to our hearts and kissing the lips 
that responded to our touch in days gone by. 

I cannot keep my hands off the shoulders or away 
from patting the hands of ladies of sweet faces who are 
over eighty. I do not dare to be more forward with 
those under eighty and over seventy. They are posi- 
tively the loveliest things on God's green earth or in 
the heavens that bend, save the stars and the empyrean. 



24 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

They treasure memories that thrill. They are all pol- 
ished like the facets of the diamond that gets its light 
from hard rubs. I lived with one for years, a second 
mother, who combined all that makes angels into hu- 
mans and who, with her like, should never pass on to 
make angels again out of the flesh, until all who so love 
them have passed beyond the stage of missing them. 

Again — and finally what is it, dear friends, that 
makes the world go on and on? I have told you what 
I think about it, over and over again. It is what I see 
in the faces of old ladies who are motherly and sweet. 
It is what we hear in their cooings over children and 
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is what the 
dove sings in the nest; what the heart sings when it 
sees the chimney-smoke rising in welcome; what the 
soul sings when it prays for better things for other 
souls. "I do not know why I am kept here," said my 
dear old lady, "I think it may be for some good; at 
least my great, great-grandchildren love me and I love 
them and can take care of them when their mother 
wants a little rest." 

Mothers of men! Mothers of churches! Mothers 
of human thoughtf ulness ! Mothers of the spirit of 
Christ ! Why stand we here idle when the world calls ? 
Why fret we with questions of tomorrow's bank ac- 
count while the hearth-fire gleams and the child prat- 
tles, and the tree shines with its candles and the stores 
are full of wonders and the heart is full of love ? To- 
morrow the hearth may be cold and nothing be hov- 
ering about it but the ghosts of the day when you had 
the chance to make happiness weigh down the scale of 
figures in a bank-book. And among those spirits that 
hover, there will be faces that wear the smiles of the 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 25 

ones that bore us, glowing with the undying fire of that 
Love that saves this world; that makes its endless pro- 
cessions of its human-kind and that keeps the sweet, 
sweet look in the faces of dear old ladies. 

ON "OLD-TIME TORCHLIGHT 
PROCESSIONS" 

STARTED out marching with a tin hat and 
a torch over my shoulder, when I was about 
fourteen, all for the glory of Hayes and 
Wheeler. We used to meet in a sail-loft and 
drill, and the promise of a torch and a uni- 
form was sufficient to get together about 
three hundred boys. Some of the older graduated into 
the "cavalry" (I almost wrote that word "calvary") 
and rode horses that went sidewise at the blare of the 
trumpet and the bursting of the bomb. Horses were 
not so educated in those days. 

The glory of a torch-light parade was wholly in 
Its length, which was somewhat dependent on the way 
It stretched out. Sometimes in our republican town 
the democratic parades used to come along in sections' 
one-half of it tarumping afar while the other was 
tarumpmg in the near vicinity. There was always a 
good deal of friction between the two political parties 
as to which had the longer procession and which indi- 
cated victory in the fall. Boys participated in the 
debate. It was usually fought out on the back-lots. 

The sight of a staid citizen weighing about two 
hundred and fifty pounds, stealing out of his peaceful 
home at about 6 p.m. to form in parade in the city 



26 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

square at 7 p.m. prompt, was a sight to remember. 
He had a furtive look on his face and a uniform under 
his arm. Often he was gotten up as a knight with a 
tin sword and a helmet. His wife giggled at him 
with reason. Women did not vote in those days. 
Subsequently we may expect women to ride horses in 
political parades dressed in Joan of Arc regalia. All 
we can say is that they would look very attractive; 
far better than a fat man with a red face on the back 
of a ramping plug bouncing up and down and threat- 
ening to burst. 

We used to march miles and miles and cheer 
until we had no cheerfulness left. Every house 
with three candles on the window panes was sufficient 
for a cheer. I was captain of one company of boys 
and I had to get up in front as the cheer came down 
the line and yell "Three cheers for our patriotic citi- 
zen and true republican, William Scroggins!" We 
piped our tenor cheer like a flock of seabright hens. 
We had the right to carry our torches home — or at 
any rate we took the right — and I have known boys 
in my company to march in the democratic ranks for 
the sake of getting a torch. There were all kinds of 
torches — some that had a hole in the handle up which 
you could blow and make the flames stream. There 
was the story of the patriotic son of Ireland in a dem- 
ocratic parade who was found tied up in an agonized 
knot on the curbing. As they stood over him his 
friend Casey said : "Poor divil ! He sucked his toorch." 

All this was supposed to stimulate adherence to 
the cause and to create the crowd psychology, which 
is such a fearful thing that even college professors 
write books about it and offer remedies for it — 
unaware, poor things, that it is a part of human 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 27 

nature and can be cured quite as well as we can cure 
the sun from giving us a coat of tan. We all like to 
be winners and always will. Public opinion is a sort 
of concentrated human desire. The crowd spirit is 
not the crowd gone crazy, whatever the mob-mind 
may be. We wore white hats for Blaine because we 
wanted Blaine to win. And some men wanted him to 
win a whole lot when they put on those fuzzy mon- 
strosities and went abroad in them. I have seen men 
in Blaine hats who ought to have been in museums. 
They were museum-pieces all right. 

Henry Wood of our town marched in a parade 
once and his little boy marched with him, holding his 
hand. The way was long and Henry had enjoyed all 
of the thrills that he could hold for one night. He was 
coming around a corner of an old home street, plod- 
ding along thinking — for he was a thinker, all right. 
Suddenly his little boy, weary with the eternal march, 
said: "Where are we going now, daddy?" Henry 
looked at his boy tenderly and said: "Damned if I 
know, darling." 

That was it. We didn't know. We just marched. 
Many of us are doing the same today. We have 
marched a long way; we have carried the torch; we 
have even sucked the torch, the wrong way; we have 
plodded in the dust ; we have lost step with the band ; 
we have cheered lights along the way for folks we 
have never seen before or since; we have rejoiced 
in victories that were barren for us, but we are still 
going. And as we hold the hands of children and 
they ask us, "Where are we going now, daddy?" we 
say without the expletive, "Umphed if I know, 
darling." 

And that's the fun of it. 



ON "MY AUNT'S MILLINERY 
SHOP" 




Y AUNT was a pretty little woman with a 
certain degree of style for the country. She 
walked with a little hurried step and when 
she went to the post-office in the village in 
the afternoon she looked like a robin run- 
ning thru the rain after an early worm. 
She was so neat and trim and sprightly that she was 
my notion of a pretty woman. And she was as good 
as she was pretty. 

In her early life she went over to Franklin, Mass., 
into a straw-shop. All of the country girls did that 
and came home in the summer after earning good 
wages in the winter making hats. Here she learned 
her millinery. She had two different shops in the 
village at different times and as I look back on them, 
I am confused by the two. Sometimes I see her biting 
off thread in one window and sometimes in the other, 
and often I see the screen of cloth in the rear in which 
the occasional helper worked, away from the gaze of 
the populace, which sometimes numbered two or three 
down the drowsy street. 

I wonder that I am writing about such personal 
things. There is no reason except there may be a 
certain anthology of a country town about it that per- 
haps is a fading memory and deserves to be preserved 
as a part of the simple annals that I have been endeav- 
oring to preserve in my own way — let alone what others 
may do about them. Be that as it may, the thought of 
that millinery shop stirs memories of singular things. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 29 

There is a horse hitched to a post, flicking flies with the 
swish of his tail. There is the village dignitary, Steve 
Carr, sitting on the steps of his store, smoking a cigar 
and not a customer in sight. There is the little river 
gleaming in the hot sun at the foot of the street. 
There is the boy coming from the train, with the 
afternoon mail. There is T. Tyler, tailor, coming out 
of his shop with his T. D. in his mouth and his hair 
disheveled. It is so dull that I go into my aunt's mil- 
linery shop and watch her work. 

I don't believe that more human nature can be 
found in any place more emphatically suggested in 
its oddities than in the millinery shop. I have never 
appreciated the paucity of old-time finery more keenly 
than in comparing those days with the attitude of a 
modern girl buying a hat. In those days there were 
no trimmed hats in glass cases, thousands of them to 
be tried on and cast disdainfully aside. The old-time 
girl went in and had a hat or a bonnet built from the 
foundation up. She looked at a picture of a hand- 
some girl with a becoming hat on her head and for 
the. moment had the notion that she was going to look 
like that. But often she did not, in the final analysis. 
Old ladies never had a new hat or bonnet. They came 
in with the relics of all of the bonnets they had ever 
had and, by the addition of a new shape and a possible 
flower, got the ultimate goods. 

My aunt was a gay chatterer and she sold the goods 
to old ladies as well as young. She used to take their 
old wares and try her best to make them "do." She 
would turn flowers and twist feathers and save for 
poor old souls. She built wedding bonnets that were 
dreams in those days and that never by any stretch of 



30 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

extravagance cost over four dollars. And that is only 
one-fifth the price of a "bang hat" nowadays. 

I can see her now sitting by the window, pretty 
thing, making bonnets in a hurry to wear to funerals. 
Everybody seemed to be in a hurry for bonnets to 
wear to funerals. I used to come in and ask in my 
way, "How's funerals?" The corpse was surely hon- 
ored with furbelows in those days. Aunt snipped and 
sewed and sang and even went to market once a year 
and came home all full of the romance and the spice 
of the great town. 

On the opposite side of the shop she sold toys. I 
used to go over there and look them over. I never 
knew what she was thinking about, but I have never 
forgotten one rebuke for a childish subtlety that I 
indulged in in her shop. I was looking over her toys. 
If there was anything in the world I wanted, it was 
a jack-knife. She sold 'em but evidently did not give 
them away. I was looking over one of them that 
pleased me, quite unaware that she was watching me 
out of the corner of her eye. I was aware that it had 
happened that if you suddenly asked what was in a 
package and someone said "jack-knife" the next 
words might be "Don't you want it? You may 
have it." 

I tried it and aunt looked at me and said: "Yes, 
sonny, that is a jack-knife. Didn't you think it was 
when you were looking at it?" 

The street still drowsily stretches up and down 
hill in my memory. And all are dust that dwelt 
therein. And I had no jack-knife when I wanted it 
and when I can have one I don't want it. Ah me! 
The funeral "bunnits !" And the silent customers that 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 31 

are no more ! And the jack-knives that we didn't get ! 
And the waters that ran to the sea by the way of the 
gleaming river. It is all one with Francois Villon — 
"Where are the snows of yester year!" Where are 
the "bunnits" of my aunt whom I saw laid away under 
the roses years ago. 



99 




ON "A RIDE TO BATH 

HAVE been to Bath before by electrics and 
have had rides that were dreams; "all 
aboard" at Lewiston; a passing glimpse of 
the Byzantine towers and turrets of Lisbon 
Falls and then "all out" at Bath — just 
like that; my nose all of the time in a book. 
Perfectly lovely, excellent service, up hill, down dale, 
with the broomstick train. 

Hence ! And therefore ! This account of a recent 
trip to Bath has no concern with the average trip and 
is no criticism of the trolley line called L. A. and W., 
which some foolish people think means Late Always 
and Wherever. Not so. This trip was Special. It 
was unique, like Peary's Dash for the North Pole; 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; Eliza's Trip Across the 
Ice, Pursued by Bloodhounds; The Voyage of the 
Mayflower; George Washington's Crossing of the 
Delaware. 

We were going to Bath last Saturday and the 
problem was to get from Lewiston to Bath by noon, 
twenty-eight miles. We might have done it by ox- 
team in 1840, or by limousine in 1920. My limousine 
is laid up with the lumbago and besides, I have no 



32 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

limousine and never had. No editor should have a 
limousine. He should be at work. And if I had 
owned a limousine, I was advised that it would have 
been too icy on the roads to have driven it. 

The Maine Central Railroad once ran between 
Lewiston and Bath. It "runs" no longer. It simply 
leaves here and goes off into Alice in Wonderland and 
remains there and you wake up elsewhere with the 
Cheshire Cat. There is a train from here to Bath 
sometime before daybreak but it goes nowhere in 
particular and waits two hours on the way and comes 
back to Lewiston in the same fashion. Its schedule 
rips along at the rate of eight miles an hour. The 
price is a dollar a minute. Any man who travels 
between Lewiston and Bath by the Maine Central will 
age alarmingly. If you started out to visit a young 
mother with a new-born infant in Bath, the child 
would meet you at the train with whiskers — if male; 
and with hair out over its ears, if female. If I want 
to get to Bath by train for Christmas, I start on the 
previous Fourth of July. A lady friend of mine 
started from Bath in the prime of health to visit me 
in Lewiston and when she reached here she was just 
barely able to get admission into the Old Ladies' 
Home. 

So we took the electrics at 8.35 and planned to get 
to Bath at 11 A.M. — not speedy but safe! One hun- 
dred and fifty minutes for thirty miles. Twelve miles 
an hour! Fine! We bowled along at this lightning 
speed until we reached Topsham. At Lisbon Falls 
they changed conductors and motormen, and I am not 
sure that they did not change them at Lisbon, at 
Pejepscot and at the Crooked Bridge. I didn't mind. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 33 

1 
Nobody seemed to know just when a new conductor 

and a new motorman might appear out of the woods 
and ask toll. I have nothing to say about the trip 
until we reached the middle of the bridge at Topsham, 
except that we were then twenty-five minutes late and 
I could hear the wedding march reverberating thru 
the distances, in fancy. On the bridge we had to get 
out and change cars. The other car was wrong end 
to, and we went into it and faced back home. Then 
we waited. I don't know what we waited for; but it 
seemed to be a discussion of "Who's Who in Motor- 
men." One motorman came up and looked our car 
over and backed into the river. Another came over 
and raped our controller-handle and ran off with it. 
Then he went behind a brick building and looked at 
the river. Then a motorman came in and opened a 
window and looked dreamily at the landscape and 
went away. Then a motorman and a conductor came 
along and talked it over. "Tum-tum-te-tum ! Here 
comes the groom," says I, "stiff as a broom." 

By and by the motorman picked out his conductor 
and languidly the twain shouted "This car for Bath !" 
and together, began to inch us up the hill back to. 
Every time the motorman gave her the juice, it 
snapped my neck back until the joints rattled. The 
motorman opened the window and let the cold air 
in on my feet. But I did not mind that. We were 
moving, at any rate. Thus we backed up hill into 
Brunswick and the village clock said 45 minutes late. 
Unusual ! Most unusual ! 

Then we went in on the Freeport track and they 
changed motormen and conductors again. And the 
new conductor came briskly in and shouted "This car 



34 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

for Bath!" And then we waited ten minutes and 
then ran out on the Bath Hne and waited while they 
changed conductors and motormen. Then they ran 
fifty feet when we saw another car coming from Bath. 
The two cars ran up closely together and the conduc- 
tors and motormen discussed which one should retreat 
and which advance. Then I think they went over to 
the moving pictures. Finally, we retreated again to 
the Freeport line. Then the conductor of the Bath 
car came over into ours and ours went into the Lew- 
iston car and they exchanged overcoats, trolley irons, 
and controller handles. Then the Lewiston-bound 
car went bounding past us on its way to Lewiston and 
we were surprised by the conductor coming in and 
shouting violently "Brunswick! This car for Bath!" 
We went rattling along like a deer over windfalls 
until we got to the Maine Central. It would be impos- 
sible for the Maine Central to get out of the way of 
anything in Brunswick; so we had to wait for two 
trains and a shifter and a coal-train and a load of pulp 
and a snow-plow to pass us while the gates were down. 
The conductor again came in — I think he was the 
same conductor — and said, "This car for Bath." They 
certainly have fine service. We were just ready to be 
off and away on our dashing pathway of steel when 
there was a shout from the Maine Central station. 
Fifteen or twenty passengers from the train were leap- 
ing our way with baggage. We waited five minutes 
for them and took them on. Now we're off! We 
changed conductors and motormen at Merrymeeting 
and again at Cook's. It seems that every conductor 
and motorman was off his feed time ! "Da-da-dee-da 1 
Here comes the bride!" We had taken on ten or 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 35 

twelve more wedding guests. The Ancient Mariner 
(that's I) regaled them with hopes. And finally we 
rounded the corner of the street where the church 
stands. And lo ! We were in plenty of time. We 
would not have been there a moment earlier. 

And that's the beauty of the travel from Lewis- 
ton to Bath — you always get there in plenty of season 
for what you want to do in Bath ! Wonderful, I say. 
The Electrics know their business. I just love their 
variety and their certainty ! 



ON "THE QUALMS OF GOLF" 




OMEHOW I dread the return of golf to these 
cities, for it means a revival of conversation 
that is as catching as the seven-years itch. 
When I used to play golf, and others played 
golf, the means of escape from golf-talk were 
as good as the means of escape from the lower 
dungeon of a modern penal institution. If I went into 
the reading room of a club someone was telling how 
he made the third hole in three, and if I went over into 
the smoking room of the club someone was telling how 
he made the fourth hole in four. And if I went into 
the billiard room someone was telling how he made the 
fifth hole in five. One drove into a bunker; another 
drove into the rough; another drove into a pigsty and 
another drove into a baby-carriage. One halved a hole 
with the brassies and another won a hole with a niblick 
and another lost a hole with a putter and another won 
a match with a chew of tobacco. I could not escape it ; 
I had to take up the game. 



36 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

We had a country club that was positively lovely in 
view ; but weak on greens. They said we needed sheep 
for it; but about all we had was sheep or we never 
would have lost the club and its property. I suppose 
we lost our interest in golf because it was not golf. As 
far as I was concerned, I had as soon take a violent run 
over a sheep-pasture as to play a game on this land. 
But the wind was soothing and it was good for my indi- 
gestion and I could talk golf just as well over that nine- 
holes as anywhere else. 

I believe that the most wonderful game of golf ever 
played was on these links. You see it was this way. 
I was playing — 

I notice that you are moving away, so I will defer 
the story to some other time, and that is why I have 
qualms about the revival of golf in these cities. We 
shall have golf talk right along all of the time every- 
where; but I don't know but what it will be a relief 
from motor talk. Anything makes me sick — never hav- 
ing had a motor car — is to hear men sit down and talk 
about the internal parts of an automobile. 

Well, sir, I was playing a foursome, a mixed four- 
some for the championship of the second division of 
the handicap element of the club, and as I was driving 
off the third hole and — 

Pardon me, but if you are not interested, I will de- 
sist. You see there is so much that one might say about 
golf that is really valuable that I am willing to break 
the silence of years to dilate on the topic, and that is 
why I have additional qualms. 

Golf is a game of parts. You part from temper, 
golf balls, money, time, opportunity. You belong to a 
club and every moment you don't play you are losing 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 37 

money, and every moment you do play you are losing 
money, and there you are. 

It was like this. After I drove off in that foursome 
and landed behind a tree as usual, I took my niblick 
which was named Sir Thomas, because it was very 
short in the handle and had a peculiar head on it — why 
it was called by such a name I never knew, but so it 
was, and when I whacked the ball it struck against the 
tree and went into my pocket. That was not so pecu- 
liar as was the fact that nobody saw where it went 
and we all thought that it was buried in the tree. We 
called it two and I threw out and drove again and 
struck a fat man in the stomach, and he was so mad 
that he threw the ball into the woods and we could not 
find it. We called it three and I was playing four and 
on my next stroke — 

If this wearies you, I just as soon talk about some- 
thing else. I can see that you would prefer that I dis- 
cuss some other topic and I will do so, limiting my 
reservations to the League of Nations. I will not dis- 
cuss that or the size of Harding's plurality or the rea- 
sons why the majority was so enormous, with anyone. 
I feel that we are approaching a revival of the pre- 
Raphaelite art and that the general scale of living is 
to come down and that we are likely to have hard times 
this winter, and that if a person owes you anything, 
you better collect it speedily, but I will not talk about 
the League of Nations. 

It might interest you to know, however, that on my 
next stroke in that hole in that mixed foursome, I did 
an amazing thing. I drove into a limousine and woke 
up the chauffeur and when he revived we found the 
ball between his teeth. 




38 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

It is, therefore, not without reason that one has 
qualms about the coming of golf into the social life 
of a town. 

ON "STILTS" 

LONG about this time, old-fashioned boys used 
to take to stilts. I say along about this time, 
but as a matter of fact there was no special 
time. When a boy got restless and out-of- 
sorts and was compelled to divert himself, he 
must take either to piracy, barn-burning, 
tight-rope walking, running away to sea or walking on 
stilts. And I say stilts because it is my subject. A 
boy might start to make a box-trap, or to raise rabbits 
or to hunt skunks or any one of a thousand things. 

In this season between hay and snow ; between taws 
and bob-sleds, when out of doors do not attract and 
when life is almighty tough for a boy, there is not much 
for him to live for. He is not appreciated. He is not 
understood. Nobody seems to sympathize with him. 
He gets moody very rapidly. There is something that 
boils up in him like the water in a pan recently set 
upon the fire. It steams and makes a noise and dis- 
turbs the other functions. You should then see to it 
immediately that the safety-valve is not tied down. 
Stilts are as good as anything, as I have said before ; a 
box-trap will do for certain boys. But for boys who 
want something dangerous, exciting, blood-stirring and 
semi-boastful, the stilts are alone adequate for a brief 
experience. 

Any boy can make stilts — with a good deal of fuss. 
He has to find two pieces of straight board about four 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 39 

inches wide and two inches thick and he has to have 
two clumps of wood to nail on them at the requisite 
height from the ground where he can put his feet, and 
he has to have nails and a hammer and some room. 
And he has to have a jack-knife for the purpose of 
rounding off the handles. And then he has to have a 
door-yard and an audience. Stilts are no good with- 
out an audience, and herein lies my application of the 
boy-on-stilts to the scheme of life in general, as you 
may discover later on if this talk comes out anywhere 
near what I have in mind. 

It is no great trick to learn to walk on stilts; in- 
deed, it comes rather too easily. A few varied con- 
tortions, a few wild leaps into space, a couple of falls 
wherein one can easily drop his stilts and get to the 
ground safely, are all of the usual experiences. And 
once setting forth, on stilts, a boy may walk amid an 
admiring group of girls, nonchalently as possible, 
wobbly in reality, but conceivably with the grace of a 
courtier as he eyes the landscape and studies the clouds 
or leans gracefully against a fence or wall. 

In reality I never saw a boy who had any grace 
whatever on stilts, I never saw a boy who really per- 
severed in learning to walk on stilts. I have never seen 
a boy who enjoyed walking on stilts; but I never knew 
a boy who at some time or other did not try it. And 
the reason is instinctive and intuitional. There is an 
egotism in stilts that is natural to man. It lifts him 
above his fellow-boys. It indulges his notion of look- 
ing over the heads of other persons. It makes his 
stride magnificent and regal. It pleases his desire for 
prominence. It attracts the notice of the men beneath, 
dogs, cats and insects also included. 



40 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

There are a great many persons who are walking 
most of the time on stilts. Lofty in conversation, 
stilted in expression, wobbly in logic, looking over the 
heads of the every-day folk, trying to see what is be- 
yond, when in reality the things over there are just the 
same as the common things here underfoot. I have 
known men who never talked the common verbiage of 
the every-day person, conversational stilt-walking. I 
have known people who never admire anything unless 
it comes from afar and never wish to be anywhere ex- 
cept in some strangely distant land. They are on 
mental stilts. I have seen people who never esteem the 
home folks but take in the stranger and are taken in by 
the stranger, and who walk thus on stilts of the pro- 
fessional lion-hunter and are often gobbled up by the 
lion. Many people used to walk on theological stilts. 
The Puritans who, almost three hundred years ago, 
drove Anne Hutchinson to her death and hung Mary 
Dyer in the morning for their declaration of "Covenant 
by Grace" as opposed to "Covenant by Works," walked 
on theological stilts and strutted about, thus ludicrous, 
severe and wicked in their devotion, not to the ideas of 
God, but to the stilts on which they walked. 

Let the children have stilts. Let them blow off 
steam with them. Get up on them yourself if the earth 
seems dull and the height seems low to your weary 
vision. I have no criticism of your desire for a change ; 
but for heaven's sake and the sake of us who live on 
earth, do not stay up there. Come down often and 
stay long with us common folk; enjoy us if you can; 
bear with our shortcomings and our short stature and 
quit your strolling and your wobbling. For the feet of 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 41 

man must be on earth with the common things of life 
even tho his head is in the air ; yea ! even tho his im- 
agination hath wings like the bird ! 



ON "MY BEST UMBRELLA" 

BOUGHT it thirty-four years ago and it is 
still my best umbrella — my only, own um- 
brella, the relic of my youth, the shelter of my 
years, and when I carry it (as I occasionally 
do) and show it to my friends as an umberell 
of age and distinction, they look at me doubt- 
fully and curiously. 

The other day I left it on the window of the room 
of the Governor's Executive Council at Augusta, and 
invading an executive session of the Council to rescue 
it, I told that august body that, had the Governor mis- 
appropriated it, I would hardly have held him guilty — 
it is such a temptation to own such an umberell. It 
would confer distinction on even a Governor of Maine, 
with large responsibilities and a corresponding con- 
tingent account. For it is a large, noble, obese um- 
berell ; and it has all the appurtenances of its years — 
angina pectoris, arterio sleroris and ankylosis of the 
ribs. And yet, withal, it is wonderful. They don't 
make such umbrellas nowadays. It has an ivory head, 
which is considered appropriate to me. On it is carved 
a monkey holding a nut. Still appropriate. The mon- 
key roosts on a stick. There the appropriateness 
ceases. Its stock is stout; its size is ample, its beauty 
is chaste and sufficient. 



42 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

You ask what is there of public interest in my 
thirty-four-year-old umbrella and I say this — it is sig- 
nificant of a certain social attitude of the community 
and a certain reg^ard for the umbrella. I ask you, 
where can you find another umbrella that is thirty-four 
years old and still a man's "best umbrella," fit to take 
to church — if he dared take it there, lest some deacon 
might mistake it for his own ! A community that has 
respected my property right to an umbrella for two 
grenerations, merits mention, and such a community is 
this. A person who has never forgotten or lost or mis- 
laid his umbrella for thirty-four years is worthy of 
appreciation, even if I have to call it to your attention 
as I am now doing. 

Thirty-four years under one umbrella! The days 
of my youth ! Alas, the fleeting years ! The girls that 
have been sheltered beneath it; the storms that have 
beaten upon it; the thoughts I have had beneath it! 
Do you have no fondness for umbrellas in general? Is 
there nothing sweet in the antiquity of two beneath 
the same shelter of night when the rains beat upon the 
silken house and the near-by river sobs ; and the waters 
roar against the bridge piers, and the lamps of the 
streets are dim, and the pavements glisten like polished 
sheet steel in the slanting rains. This is the very um- 
brella that took us home, when we stood by the door 
and I saw reflected in her eyes, something that every 
rainstorm, since then, has brought back to mind — and 
then I heard the bull-dog and the old man both coming, 
at the same time. 

I hardly appreciated my best umbrella until the 
other day, when I again took it from its home security 
and wore it to Augusta. People noticed it. It had a 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 43 

colonial atmosphere. It had a look like the fan-shaped 
windows over the doorways of the houses in Wiscasset, 
It looked like the portraits of old governors, like John 
Fairfield and William King. It conferred on one a sug- 
gestion of a past, mysterious and traditional. No won- 
der I felt free to tell the Governor's Executive Council 
about the angel (I should say umberell) they had been 
entertaining unawares. There is something in years 
even of umbrellas to respect. There is a dignity in the 
age of personal belongings that we do not appreciate. 
One of the richest men in Maine drives his first auto- 
mobile (one-cylinder) coughing along and, my word 
for it, he has my respect for his attachment. Old 
houses, old friends, old furniture, old books, old wine, 
old tapestries, old songs, old truths, old faces, old mem- 
ories, old — yet ever new if only there entered into them 
the thoroughness of the craftsman, the undying fire of 
the Word, the fadeless element of beauty, the never- 
ending continuity of human or divine worth of the 
thing itself. I would not care for my umberell if it 
had not been ivory and silk, fit to endure as properly 
made and bespeaking original family connections. 
You will not love your old books unless they are worthy. 
And old faces! They sweeten as the days come and 
go ; enduring not by any other reason than because the 
thorough work of the soul shines out of them, the 
beauty that is brother and sister of the Truth that is 
eternal! So much for the umberell which now I fold 
and lay away for my posterity. 




ON "A SERMON ON THE SEED" 

HE other day, Dr. Twitchell of Auburn, who 
conducts a nine-acre farm at Monmouth, Me., 
summers, and does well with it, showed me a 
simple thing that has kept me thinking at odd 
moments. 

It was a picture of a great number of Hub- 
bard squash raised from a single seed. I think that 
they weighed 146 pounds, lovely to the frugal eye of 
the mind, a part of the greatest thing in all the world — 
the crops of earth. 

This great assemblage of Hubbard squash in the 
photograph came from a single seed weighing but a 
trifling part of a single ounce. What an alchemy! 
What a more wonderful thing than the transmutation 
of a base metal into gold! What mystic power is it 
that takes this seed, as it is placed in the ground, and 
from out the seemingly insoluble earth and some un- 
dying fire of Life makes it into vine and gourd. Think 
of what it constructs! The vine, the leaf, the flower 
and the colors of gold, of emerald, and the salmon hues 
of the firm flesh of the food. It paints the outside of 
the squash with a waterproof material impervious to 
moisture of the earth and of the rains. It increases its 
food power six thousand times. It creates within it- 
self its own powers of reproduction thousands of times. 
It feeds the bees and the birds. It holds within the 
cups of its flowers the dews and the rains for its own 
pollenization. It lays all this before mankind and will 
go on and on with care until the end of the sunshine 
and the dews. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 45 

These things make us wonder. And wonder is an 
element of culture and of intelligence that lies at the 
root of both science and philosophy. Wonder is the 
light of life and when it dies life dies. And the greatest 
source and provocative of wonder is this application 
of power behind the universe — the power that we call 
God. We are prone, in this day, to look at symbols of 
power as power itself. We look on money that can 
purchase work of other hands and purchase the work 
of other brains, as power ; but the power is in the hand 
and brain and in the seed in the ground and in the 
illimitable forces of the universe. We do not think 
much about it, but the abundance of power about us is 
amazing and a source of wonder, even to the scientist. 
Recently a popular magazine has had an article on the 
wonder of the human heart and the human arteries and 
the human intestines, if you please. He compares the 
heart to the highest-duty dynamo ever devised by man, 
and by the comparison, man's efforts, even with elec- 
tricity, are puerile. You could not make a piece of hose 
or other conduit that would by any possible means do 
the marvelous work that the human arteries perform, 
resilient, carrying circulation to remotest portions of 
the body by tubes, infinitely smaller than any that we 
can conceive ; and yet capable of such extension by elas- 
ticity in periods of stress and excitement as to make 
them wonderful, beyond words. Do you know any per- 
son who can make an object like the certain class of 
microbes, that can pass through the most carefully con- 
structed filter, and that within a short time can yet 
create millions of their kind with enough virulent 
power to kill an ox. Aristotle thought that there were 



46 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

about 500 kinds of life. Yet today we know that there 
are more forms of one family of insects than there are 
stars, visible to the naked eye. 

The immensity of things! We may be seeing to- 
night the twinkling of a star that went out ages ago, 
and yet light travels 186,000 miles a second. When 
we see the light of a star such as Alpha Centauri, which 
lies nearer us by ten billion miles than any other fixed 
star, we see light that started from that star four years 
ago. If the telescope reveals the hundreds of millions 
of heavenly bodies, of which we see but a corner, the 
miscroscope reveals the millions of the lesser world. 
What is this universe in which we are placed? It is a 
matter for us children to ponder over as our own chil- 
dren ponder over this world, cupped in blue over us 
and peopled infinitely, from Dr. Twitchell's squash to 
the wonders of the cold depths of the sea. If we pass 
into cell-action we are lost ! If we pick up the leaf of 
grass we have a cosmos fit to inspire another Walt 
Whitman to sing the songs of a cosmos of undying life ! 
Interelations ! Universal flux and reflux! Progress 
and evolution of forms! Seed and squash. Cat's fur 
and human hair from the same bread and milk ! And 
we so idle, so vain, so mistaken in our estimates of 
values, so eager for the dollar that counts for nothing 
unless that squash grows, those insects thrive, those 
stars shine, those arteries work, and that heart beats ; 
and unless the Undying Fire lives in the roots of the 
grasses. 

Agriculture is our handmaiden. It is the noblest 
of our professions. Life is the divine gift to man and 
the seed in the ground is the symbol of the mightiest 
transmutation; as is the seed that of life in all living 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 47 

organisms. Unless we till we perish ! Unless we seek 
the soil we die. If we forget the fields the cities shall 
starve. By the sweat of our faces shall we earn our 
daily bread. Yet in the midst of marvels we cease to 
wonder and to worship. But — unless we do, we shall 
perish ! 

ON "THE FIRST FROSTS" 

MIND me these November mornings of many 
memories of early frosty mornings in the 
country, when as a boy, the world turned 
white in a night — not with snow, but with that 
mysterious coating of rare white crystals, that 
stood up separate and distinct, along the 
fence rails and on the grasses. 

There would be sun over the intervales and stream- 
ing down the road to the village, where the wheel-ruts 
would be dark and warm looking with a mark of an 
early passing wheel. We knew that the frost would 
soon go, but on the door-steps a boy could slide and an 
anxious sled-runner could be hauled over the frosts of 
the door-yard. 

It was as tho the hand of some painter had come in 
the night and had coated the world with hexagons of 
diamonds and aquamarine. They caught the light of 
the sun and flashed all over a commonplace homeside in 
the country and beat anything that Aladdin ever did 
in a single night. All of the dew of the world had been 
transformed in a twinkling into gems. A boy would 
stand in the midst of it and look over the familiar 
fields and shout with delight at the promise of variety 
in a dull life that was in reality a succession of marvels. 



48 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

He saw before him rude buffetings of winter-storm, 
roads covered hip-deep in snows, ponds ringing to the 
twang of the skater's heel, deep fires in the fire-place, 
long evenings and all of the other promise of snug win- 
ter in which a boy turns to school with a sense of re- 
lief from haying and harvesting, 

I have a vivid picture of the frost on the nails on 
the barn-door — a peculiar effect to linger in one's mem- 
ory — but so it happens to be. Nails that protruded 
from the door that were built up into little fluffy 
mounds like the pussy-willow. And I know how clear 
and still were these frosty mornings. The air trans- 
mits sounds better when it is chill. All sounds are 
clearer and sharper. Summer sounds are still. The 
birds have gone. There are a few belated crows caw- 
ing over in a near-by field and worrying over the rem- 
nants of the harvest where the furrows are streaked 
with the first frost. But the old hum of summer has 
passed away. Here is still suggestion of the death and 
burial of the nascent. It is a world coming back to 
bread and water after a banquet. Here is the promise 
of the first snows that will cover all ugliness of with- 
ered cornstalk and dead stubble and that will soon be 
ruffling and fluting the fence-rails and the tilled land 
in the most fantastic of fashions. 

My ! But a boy's toes tingle on this first frost and 
the bam seems warm and cosy and the cattle steam 
with their breaths in the tie-up and the tomato plants 
in the old garden lie over, done for at last. The little 
pond in the meadow shows gleaming and tinkly around 
the edges with a thin ice. And as the sun advances, 
everything herbaceous falls over and wilts and the day 
comes to find it growing black and dead. The ferns 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 49 

give up the ghost ; the long grasses are dead and black ; 
the beechnuts rattle down ; the squirrels come out and 
get busy; the fields are slippery as grease to the foot 
where the frost lies under the sod; the earth rings 
like a drum as your heel impinges on it. And by and 
by all is as before except the look of discouragement 
that comes with the returning sun and warmth of 
noon-day. 

But — there is in the back of the mind of every 
observant person some keen memory of some frosty 
morning — the first white frost of some year. It sig- 
nifies exhilaration and hope. The prospect of change 
enters into it. Nature itself wakes up, too. The deer 
come out of the swamps and begin to look for their 
mates. The bear crawls into his den and goes to 
sleep. The ponds get ready to transform themselves 
into wagon-roads. And vegetation begins to return 
to the earth what it has taken from it, the slow trans- 
mutation of substance back to the storehouse in the 
form of the plant-sheaf and root, the vegetation not 
of use for food returning to the soil. 

First frosts kill a great deal that is of little value. 
It is so in life. We have a great many first frosts in 
our experiences, disappointments of life that come 
along and come along with periodical disturbance, 
killing ambitions and plans and futile purposes. Job 
had a tremendous experience with a white frost on 
all of his earthly plans. But it was only a cleaning up 
of the things that should return to God. The undy- 
ing life principle remains. Even after long winters, 
out comes the spring. The stars ever shine after the 
twilight ! The dawn comes after the dark. 




ON "AN OLD BASEBALL STORY" 

ERE is a baseball story that is worth while. 
It touches on the forbidden ground of gam- 
bling and shows that twenty-five years ago, 
the bad man was just as bad and the good 
man was just as good as he is now. 

It happened in the year when Mike Gar- 
rity of Portland was manager for the Lewiston team 
and when our dearest hope was to beat Portland. 

There came a time when the Lewiston team with 
Willie Maines on its pitching staff was making good 
headway against the Portland team. Maines was a 
big, lank, raw-boned man from Windham, Maine. 
He was a powerful hitter and a good pitcher and had 
every requisite for the big league except perhaps the 
courage. He did try out in the major league and came 
back home because he was happier here. 

Portland sent up to Boston in the middle of the 
season, one day in August, for a pitcher named Big 
Mike Sullivan, who had been pitching on the Boston 
National League team and who had been most suc- 
cessful in college baseball. He was a really wonderful 
pitcher and a great ball player. 

Garrity had just sent for a new pitcher named 
Daniels. He was expected on the day of the game and 
it was Garrity's intention to pitch Daniels. 

Just before the game a well-known Portland sport- 
ing man, who, of course, knew Garrity well, for Gar- 
rity had managed baseball thru several pennant races 
and had always been successful there, came to Garrity 
and said to him that much money had been bet on 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 51 

the game and that it would be worth a large sum to 
Garrity if he would not pitch Maines for that game. 

Garrity had never intended to pitch Maines, but 
the suggestion touched him deeply. He could see 
nothing for him but to pitch Maines. He said nothing 
to anyone. Indeed he never told this story in his life 
to anyone until he told it to I. B. Isaacson of Lewiston 
in connection with the recent baseball scandals in 
the Chicago White Sox. He went to Maines and told 
him that he expected him to pitch. Maines demurred. 
It was not his turn to pitch. Garrity told Maines that 
if he refused to pitch and made any more trouble 
about it, he would send him home and that he never 
should pitch another game of professional baseball 
as long as he lived. 

This frightened Willie and of course Garrity had 
no means of making good on the threat; but it went 
with Maines and he finally said that he would pitch 
and Garrity told him additionally that if he didn't win, 
it could make no difference; but that if he didn't pitch 
as he never pitched before, woe be unto him and he 
would make his life miserable. 

I recall the game somewhat indistinctly as to the 
features; but with vivid distinctness as to Sullivan 
and Maines. I scored it ; but as was my custom, I put 
these things out of mind when completed and one game 
forced the memories of others away. But I do recall 
Sullivan and I do recall Maines as they met that after- 
noon. We had a strong team with Paddy Shea on 
third. I do not know but what there were better hit- 
ters than Shea but there were few who could hit 
harder or run slower than he. 



52 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

The game went to a tie all along. It was won by 
Lewiston on a terrific hit by Shea who went to third 
and came home on a short hit into the infield that won 
the game by some such score as 1 to or 2 to 1. 

The point of the tale is the integrity of the man- 
ager, Mr. Garrity, his matter-of-fact silence about the 
affair, his commonplace regard for his duty and his 
eagerness to balk the purposes of the sporting frater- 
nity. After that game, Shea and Maines were show- 
ered with money by the Lewiston fans. The game 
attracted wide attention. Maines pitched as never 
before. And the Portland sporting men who came 
up here fully expecting to lug away about all of the 
betting-money in Lewiston, left most of it here. 

Betting on sports kills the sport. It has its tenta- 
cles on football. It has about killed baseball. It ruined 
horse-racing. It broke up the single-scull rowing 
features of the United States. It has made the prize- 
ring notorious. It will kill football and even tennis 
if it is permitted to operate. Manager Garrity — one 
of the squarest baseball men that ever lived and one 
of the shrewdest managers that ever assembled a 
team — knows all about it and fought it all of his days 
and will fight it again, if need be. 



ON "YOUR FIRST TROUSERS' 




OU recall maybe when you wore dresses — I 
am now talking exclusively to men — for old- 
fashioned boys began life in dresses just as 
they do now, only they retained them to later 
periods in adolescence. There were old- 
fashioned mothers who kept boys in gingham 
dresses and long curls until some of the boys were 
strong enough to saw wood and chase girls. 

Remember those boys kept over long in dresses? 
Tough, was it not? They had hard times in school 
and especially after school. They went around flirt- 
ing their skirts when they ought to have been in over- 
alls. I never remember to have pitied any boy as I 
did one of these over-ripe chaps who had long red 
curls falling over his shoulders. He chewed tobacco, 
too. It was a sight to see this freckle-faced kid in his 
long, shiny red curls with a mug on him that looked 
like a rogue's gallery. He just hated his curls but 
his mother loved them. We had a legend that his 
mother was disappointed that he did not prove to be 
a girl and that she delayed the self-deception as long 
as possible. One day this boy came to school with his 
hair shingled. Say! If he wasn't a tough-looking 
youngster ! 

If you ever wore skirts after you wore cowhide 
boots with copper toes, as many boys did in the region 
where I was brought up, you will remember perhaps 
the day, the hour when you donned the habiliments of 
man and discarded those of Eve. I have a positive 
memory of the picture that those old-fashioned ging- 
ham-skirted boys made clomping down the aisles at 



54 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

school in their skirts. And I remember the occur- 
rences that bef el the lad who came to the early school in 
his first trousers. 

Our trousers in the early days were not tailor made. 
It is my memory that mother made 'em. Usually a 
pair of dad's or elder brother's was razeed to make 
the holiday. A boy stole into them as into the fond 
embrace of a couple of elbows of stove-pipe. They 
lined pants with silesia, in those days. Know what 
silesia is — or was? Fancy making underclothes out 
of the stuff they now make holland curtains of and 
you have some idea. They didn't wear underclothes — 
boys didn't in those days. Nay! Nay! They lined 
our little panties with whatever came handy. It was 
supposed to be unsanitary to wear underclothes all 
winter. So they lined the pants and you went to bed 
while they were laundered. I never could look on a 
pair of boy's pants hung on a clothes-line, turned 
wrong side out for proper airing and drying, without 
thinking of the cool bed and the hot brick. 

Once you had a pair of pants I will say one thing 
for them, they were yours. Nobody else wanted them. 
Unlike the calf that father gave you for your own, you 
retained them until they became antiques. And then 
if they had withstood the wear and tear as did many 
of those old fabrics, they went down the line or were 
passed on into some other family. I remember to have 
seen early pants of mine stalking around for years 
after I had outgrown them; and I didn't grow very 
fast, either. I think I have mentioned a pair of 
early-rose pants that mother made me out of one of 
her old beaver coats. They were about half an inch 
thick and they stood alone. Laid on the floor at night 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 55 

they looked just like two woodchuck holes. If you got 
up in the night and stubbed your toe over them, you had 
to have your toe done up in a rag. I used to try to file 
a hole thru those pants with a rat-tail file, but it 
couldn't be done. They slid with me seat-wise over 
more than a thousand miles of Maine granite and never 
broke a stitch. A bad boy could have shot me in the 
seat with a 30-30 rifle and I would never have known 
it. The teacher could larrup me on the seat of my 
breeches with a trunk strap by the hour and all she 
could do was to raise a dust — never a howl. 

When I waded to school in those pants and walked 
up the aisle I looked just like a section of a double- 
barreled canon. The boys envied me and I envied 
them. But I was proud of the pants because they 
were mine and because they were not gingham skirts. 
With a pair of red-topped copper-toed kip boots flap- 
ping about my shanks and these pants avoiding my 
shins equally well, the winds that blew up my little 
legs were fierce. We strutted around a good deal in 
our first pants and stood around where we could be 
seen, and it was a good deal of satisfaction when some 
elderly person suggested that some one was "consid- 
erably grown up." 

Strange how we children loved to be getting older. 
Now we would stay the swift hurrying years if we 
might. I do not know if the angels wear skirts or 
pants. I hope they wear both or either as they please. 




ON "THE SPECTRES IN OUR PATH" 

^ HESE talks are intended to have a certain 

general application as well as a specific value. 

We waste much of our time worrying 

about things that never happen — spectres in 

our path, that turn out to be nothing but 

vague forms, mists, odd arrangement of 

branches, stumps and other material that resolve into 

nothing harmful when we come nearer. 

The most ghostly of all spectres in the way of a 
young man starting out in life is "poverty." It is 
only a ghost. The easiest thing in the world for an 
able-bodied young man to overcome is poverty. 

The biographies of great men in history are all 
full of proof that poverty is a help. Lack of the easy 
way to an education returns such interest on the invest- 
ment of hard work, sacrifices, appreciation of values, 
diligence, toil, frugality that prove there is nothing in 
the ghost. Rather is it a beckoning hand along the 
way. Low birth and grinding poverty have really 
created most of the truly great in history. 

You can't possibly be poorer than Pope Gregory 
the Seventh, the mightiest of the pontiffs; or than 
Martin Luther, the obscure monk who split in twain 
the Church; or Gutenburg, who discovered printing; 
or Lord Kenyon, the bootblack who became chief jus- 
tice of England; or John Leyden, the great scientist, 
who walked six miles back and forth daily across the 
Scottish moors to learn to read ; or Samuel F. B. Morse, 
inventor of the telegraph, who had not even clothes for 
his back when on the eve of his triumphs; or than 
Vice-President Henry Wilson of Massachusetts; or 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 57 

than Abe Lincoln, or than Daniel Webster, or than 
President Garfield, or than ten thousand more whom 
I might name. 

Balzac, the famous novelist, said in his garret, in 
the chill of cold and hunger, "A man may be either 
king or hodman; very well! I will be king." There 
were no ghosts in his way. 

Another ghost is the feeling that one has no spe- 
cial talent. This will frighten no able-bodied man or 
woman. We hear persons saying, "If I only had the 
brilliancy of so-and-so." There is nothing in it. We 
have a few geniuses ; but most genius is a capacity for 
hard work. I can find for you in biography, exam- 
ples of scores and scores of famous men, who were 
intolerably dull as boys. Stupid urchins in school 
have made the most illustrious of men. Dull scholars ! 
Bobby Burns, Justus von Liebeg, called "Booby 
Liebeg," Dean Swift, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 
Napoleon, Wellington, Grant, Robert Clive, Walter 
Scott, Oliver Goldsmith; Professor Dalzell said of the 
young Sir Walter Scott, "Dunce he is and dunce he 
will remain." Years later, when Scott was at the 
height of his fame, he visited the same school and 
asked to see the "dunce." Shown him, the great man 
passed the lad a sovereign, saying, "There, take that 
for keeping my seat warm." 

The spectres in the path, the lions in the way, are 
all nothing to the able-bodied man. And even invalids 
have fought their way to fame. The greatest trouble 
of all comes to those who give up at the first mishap. 
I know a student who will not compete in the classes 
of college because he hears, forsooth, in literary work, 
essays which he esteems more brilliant than anything 



58 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

he can ever hope to write. He competes and fails 
and gives it up. He does not know that it is by con- 
stantly going on the route that the spectres disappear. 
Ask any writer of today how many declinations he has 
had. There is a young writer who has just been 
coming into the leading magazines and who is esteemed 
to be a coming man. He has papered his room with 
over three hundred polite letters of MSS. declined, 
all coming before he got an acceptance. 

And yet I can hear a certain young lady who is 
trying to write bemoaning her first manuscript which 
has been returned as not available and feeling the 
disgrace so keenly that perhaps she will never try 
again. Ask Hugh Pendexter up at Norway, Maine, 
how many of his early stories he had sent back. Ask 
him how many published stories he peddled until he 
found the buyer. 

So many a young man quits on the first mishap. 
The time to quit is never. There is some place for 
energy and some place for reliability and common- 
sense. There is hardly a great orator who did not 
fail on his first attempt. Those who succeed from 
the start usually have no emotions toward oratory or 
no power to become greater than the average. There 
are cases of the bankrupt coming back time after 
time. 

Don't quit, then, until you are down and out. And 
then turn over on your back, and you will see the 
stars that bid you rise again and go to your work. 




ON "CO-OPERATION AFTER A 
FASHION" 

WO men in a Maine town decided to run a 
garden together and to raise four pigs on 
shares, and they professed to be actuated by 
that honest communistic feeling that makes 
the Bolshevists proclaim with such fervor 
the brotherhood of men. 
These men are very near us in location so that 
I will not indicate the fair hillside that they chose 
nor the breed of pigs that they selected; I will only 
sketch broadly the impulses and the results of their 
altruistic emotions as they set forth in the spring to 
demonstrate the values of co-operative industry. 

One man happened to have more cash than the 
other; so he bought the seed, and as they planted it 
to potatoes, it cost a pretty penny to lay the ground 
in all its promise. One of the men is a big, blue-eyed, 
natural born gardener; the other is a slender scholas- 
tic person who has a tendency to books and who has 
no heritage of blood of them that till the soil. It takes 
something of that sort to make things grow. And 
this the blue-eyed chap happened to have — the nat- 
ural intuitions for the soil, a knowledge of when to 
plant and when to hoe and when to dig. The other 
man had nothing but a desire to share. 

So they went into partnership and the blue-eyed 
man saw to it that the seed was paid for ; the land was 
prepared; the potatoes were planted and that the 
ground was tilled. He did most of the hoeing and 
the cultivating as the summer progressed and the 
other man worked in a desultory and nervous way — 



60 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

now doing something and now doing nothing and all 
of the time anticipating. 

Then they bought the pigs. Each went forth to 
buy his own and the blue-eyed chap selected big, strong 
pigs with crooked tails and the other man selected 
smaller pigs with straight tails and they put the four 
pigs into the pen and waited for them to grow. Pigs 
is pigs — with certain differences by way of peculiar- 
ity. The blue-eyed man knew more about pigs than 
did the other chap. This was strictly co-operative 
and so he used his knowledge wisely. But it did not 
prevent him, just the same, from maintaining a certain 
proprietary interest in the two pigs that he happened 
to have selected. It was with no mean spirit that he 
watched his two pigs shoulder the other two pigs away 
from the co-operative and communistic trough, at 
feeding-time. A stronger pig is apt to do this in the 
commune of the pig, where there are no class-distinc- 
tions except ability to get the grub, and willingness 
to work for it. The blue-eyed man was always there 
when the pigs were fed and he saw that the pigs got 
an equal chance to get the results of their honest effort. 
The other chap was rarely there and he trusted to 
the Marxian doctrine that capital is the surplusage 
of the labor of all, for whatever comfort the pigs might 
get out of the feed. 

The seasons grew and the blue-eyed man's hoeing 
bore fruit and the blue-eyed man's pigs grew very 
much faster than the clerkly man's pigs, and the pota- 
toes blossomed and the pigs' tails straightened or 
crooked as the heritage of the pig indicated in the 
scheme of the Lord God Almighty, that makes some- 
how one pig to differ from another in size and fatness, 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 61 

instead of making them all on the basis of a minimum 
wage and efficiency. And when the season was over 
and the co-operative association of the blue-eyed man 
and the clerkly man, and the crooked-tailed pigs and 
the straight-tailed pigs, and the well-hoed and the 
scantily-hoed potatoes came to a day of reckoning, 
there was a question over whose pigs were these and 
whose were those, and where the co-operation began 
and where it ended. 

The blue-eyed man confessed to a certain subtlety 
in selection of the pig that could get the most out of 
the trough and saw indistinctly the analogy between 
the pigs and his own attitude in selecting them. He 
considered it good business, however, and perfectly 
legitimate, and hardly could see where the value of his 
own brain-effort should be set at naught in the matter. 
Indeed he reckoned that it had a property value in the 
unearned increment of the pig by reason of selection. 
But this was co-operation. Did the blue-eyed man hoe 
for the other man ; did he select pigs for the other man ; 
did he contribute his intuitional knowledge of seed- 
time and harvest to the other man; did he feed the 
pigs for the other man? 

All these issues are abeyance. The wives of the 
men have entered into the discussion and one of them 
favors dividing the pigs on the basis of a crooked- 
tailer and a straight-tailer to each; but the proposal 
has not yet been accepted. Co-operation goes well 
when brains and toil are on a dead level. Brains some- 
how seem to disturb it fearfully. I wonder why? 




ON "HAVING NOTHING TO DO" 

HAVE been in the woods for two weeks, in 
a log-house on a bluff fronting a rippling 
stream. From its door we look upon a pond, 
and beyond the pond, we see a mountain 
whose feet seem to stand in the pond, and 
whose sides are covered with golden-leaved 
aspens, crimson maples and deep garnet oak. And 
all of this 3,000-foot bouquet swims in the placid 
mirror of that pond and leads the eye down to cav- 
erns of lush color, below the waters. 

Up here in this camp in the woods are no tele- 
phones, no trolleys, no newspapers, no callers, no stock 
markets, no bank-accounts, no bills, no daily grist of 
business-letters. The silent forests stand about. The 
moose-birds flit silently about the camp. The wild 
duck swims in the pool. The stars rise in the twilight 
and complete their torch-like processional thru the 
long, still night and the dawn breaks not like thunder 
"out of China cross the bay," but comes like a debu- 
tante into the quiet room or else standing tip-toe on the 
mountain tops flings its streaming banners thru the 
trees and across the misty ponds. 

I often reproach myself, when I go into this camp 
in October, at the selfishness that fills my heart with 
its drug-like appeal. I go after wasting my effort in 
getting ready for the absence: the doing of a month's 
work in two weeks; in the preparation of "copy" in 
advance; and when I really lay down this work and 
look out of the rear door of the car of the train that 
speeds away to woodland, I wonder if it is right to 
be so eager for something that I so often preach 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 63 

against — the almost lost art of doing nothing what- 
soever. 

Let me picture to you the long room in the cabin 
filled with men of the first morning in camp, most of 
them up and about, getting ready for breakfast, and I 
lying there, suddenly aroused from an unaccustomed 
deep sleep, wondering just where I am. One shakes 
himself into semi-consciousness and as the full truth 
of the situation breaks upon him he snuggles into his 
bed and says to himself, "I have not even a single, tiny, 
infinitesimal, microscopical, darned thing to do." 

Did you ever feel that way? And if so, how many 
times in your life have you felt that way? At home 
even on a Sunday morning, you don't get that feeling. 
You have to get up. Here you don't have to get up — 
someone will bring you your coffee in bed. At home 
you have to eat. Here, you don't have to eat! At 
home you have to shave. Here you don't have to 
shave. At home you have to dress. Here you don't 
have to dress. You can't think of a single duty run- 
ning counter to your wishes. You don't have to wash 
your face or brush your teeth. You don't have to think, 
even. Not one of the customary cares of home en- 
croaches upon your time. You don't have to speak. 
You don't have to meditate, even. All you have to do 
is lie there, and swim in the luxury of doing exactly 
as you please. 

It occurs to me that we get very little of that in 
this world even in our vacationing and that is why I 
advocate this sort of a vacation rather than one that 
sends people skurrying by railroad trains with fixed 
schedules over long-drawn tours, housed often in hotels 
with strict social customs that must be observed. 



64 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

I would say that we are torn and frazzled by our 
daily round of duties and by the ceaseless beating upon 
our nerves of the ten million tiny impacts of the noises 
of civilization, the telephone bells, the slamming of 
doors, the interruption of visitors, the demands of 
business upon our judgment, and the never-ending 
feeling of unaccomplished work. Under this, men and 
women suddenly find themselves unbalanced, the 
physical subordinate at last to the tense strumming of 
the nerves vibrated until they refuse to cease 
vibrations. 

The remedy lies in "nothing to do," selfish as it 
may seem. Absolutely nothing imperative! Away 
from the town, in the deep hospital of the healing 
woods of Maine; away from telephone and telegraph, 
when big things stand about soothingly and steadfast, 
like big trees, big mountains, big, silent ponds, big 
game stalking thru the forest aisles, big silences. This 
joyous morning rest that I have indicated; this snug- 
gling into a bed with a feeling that you are no truant 
from business but that this IS your business, makes 
you into a child-like person. You feel like the small 
boy who stays in bed with a painless illness, that is 
ever afterward remembered as so delicious an experi- 
ence — perhaps the happiest event of your childhood 
because you then had "nothing to do" ; no school ; no 
chores ; nothing but just to turn over and sleep again. 

Thus have I spent two weeks and found it philo- 
sophically perfect; rich in renewal of boyhood mem- 
ories; drowsy in comfort; happy in its freedom; and 
ending only when, at last, the mood passed and the tug 
of the town again overcame the tendency to rest. 
Other vacations have I had — seashore, with its fitful 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 65 

activities, travel, city life, automobiling, but none like 
that of the deep woods that ever call to me like the 
memories of the arms of a mother lulling her child 
upon her bosom. 



ON "SOME OLD NEWSPAPERS" 

VERY nov^ and then some excited person 

comes into this office with a copy of "The 

Ulster County Gazette," printed with turned 

rules, in mourning for George Washington. 

The other day, a Maine newspaper "fell for 

it," giving a description of this "rare copy." 

I suppose I have at least six copies of it somewhere 

about the premises. It is merely a reproduction, 

issued about fifty years ago and sold by thousands. 

But, I WOULD like a copy of the Falmouth Ga- 
zette if anyone has one, or a copy of John Neal's Yan- 
kee; for I have no doubt that if one were interested 
in reading newspaper accounts of the burial of George 
Washington (which I am not) these newspapers car- 
ried mention of the same. The Falmouth Gazette dated 
back to January, 1785, at Portland, first newspaper 
ever issued in the District of Maine. Benjamin Tit- 
comb founded it and he was more of a preacher than 
editor and more of a printer than either. Thomas B. 
Wait had more to do with starting the paper than did 
Titcomb, for he was a stationer and had an interest in 
news. The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertise?^ 
which Titcomb "pulled off" from the old hand press 
Jan. 1st, 1785, has endured in a certain way up to now, 
through various names. Wait was really an editor and 



66 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

a writer and a man of great courage and constancy. 
In the election of 1792 when Maine was a single Con- 
gressional district, Wait stood for Judge Thatcher who 
had become very unpopular. Wait took a licking or 
two but re-elected Judge Thatcher. Nathaniel Willis, 
father of N. P. Willis, the poet, and Fanny Fern (Mrs. 
Parton) the author, worked on this paper as a writer 
and an editor. 

I would like a first copy of the Portland Argus first 
pubhshed in September, 1803, which Nathaniel Wilhs 
and Calvin Day started. This paper was established 
just as all those old newspapers were established just 
after we became a nation, to serve the interests of a 
political party, in the case of the Argus, the so-called 
Jacobin or democratic party derisively so called after 
the liberalists of France. The editor of the Argus went 
to jail for the freedom of his sentiments and he played 
it to the limit. The Argus could appear each week with 
its flaming leader second, fourth, sixth week (as it 
might be) of the imprisonment of the editor to avow 
sentiments of political freedom. The men in the shop 
also had to work under guard to repel assailants of 
the other political party, supposed to be lying in wait 
for them. 

I would like a copy of Seba Smith's paper, The 
Courier, issued at Portland in 1829, the first daily paper 
in Maine. Here was a genius — like John Neal — a hu- 
morist, author of the Jack Downing papers, a copy of 
which I once saw as a boy and whose value I did not 
then know ; probably gone to the scrap-heap, for I saw 
them in an old house in the country. Seba Smith grad- 
uated at Bowdoin in 1818. His wife was Ehzabeth 
Oakes Smith, a most talented writer. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 67 

John Neal issued his Yankee in 1828, James Adams, 
Jr., backing it. John Neal was a fiery genius, a tran- 
scendentalist, a dreamer, a patriot, a toiler of Titanic 
power. Mr. Daggett has just written a charming mon- 
ograph on him that ranks high among the literary pro- 
ductions of the year. Neal feared no man and despised 
everything but truth and honor. 

I would like a copy of Horatio King's old Jeffer- 
sonian first published at Paris Hill ; or a copy of that 
mysterious Portland publication. The World in a Nut- 
shell, that kept its secret as well as did the letters of 
Junius. 

Then, too, who has lying about his garret a copy of 
the Eastern Star, published in Hallowell in 1794, or of 
Wait & Baker's Tocsin, Hallowell, 1795, or of Peter 
Edes's Intelligencer in Hallowell (now Augusta) in 
about 1795. Peter Edes was a son of Benjamin Edes, 
the historic Boston patriot and publisher of the Boston 
Gazette, if I recall. Peter was a lank, thin-legged 
printer, "spindle shanked," who had the pertinacity of 
a starved cat. He was forced out of Augusta by poor 
business and moved to Bangor where he started the 
Bangor Weekly Register, in 1815. I have seen a copy 
of the old Peter Edes paper. If anyone has one to give 
away, send it hither. These early papers should be 
gathered by the Maine Press Association, if possible, 
and kept in memoriam to the early printers who fought, 
died and even went to jail in the service of freedom of 
opinion. 




ON "BACK TO THE OLD SCHOOL" 

F YOU go back to your old school these com- 
mencement days, the chances are that you will 
go to the old chapel and look at the seat where 
you sat on the morning of the first day. 

Here is the place ! It is very dim here and 
your eyes can hardly penetrate the distance, 
except that far up in the arches come rays of light 
through stained-glass windows that catch the floating 
pollen of the summer and the tiny diist of the sanc- 
tuary and drop like shafts of light on the old black 
walnut benches. After a while, the eyes accustomed, 
are at home. 

At first it happens that I am alone, but not for long. 
One by one, others come stealing in, softly as furtive 
students stole in, late of a morning, long ago. And 
they stand about in the dimness or sit in some familiar 
seat or contemplate as one contemplates a shrine. Here 
is a fellow-townsman of mine whom I never suspected 
of sentimentalism whom I find with a tear in his eye, 
matching the cheeks of others. He says that he never 
fails to visit chapel on commencement day and always 
unaccompanied. 

I hear someone say that it is as one pays a visit to 
the grave of his dead youth. Not so ! Rather to his 
living manhood ! For it is true that we all go back to 
our old schools as "boys" and "girls" to celebrate our 
memories. And what I wish to emphasize is this : Is it 
not true that the finest memories of old schools cluster 
about the diviner part of these shrines of a living faith 
and memorials of the manhood and womanhood of cour- 
age and consecration? To me, this is the best proof 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 69 

that I can summon from old schools of vitality of Faith 
in God. Here today, as I write in memory of my youth, 
I do not count it dead but living. There, on that seat, 
sits now a child called "me." It is forty years ago! 
His face is unfamiliar; his pockets empty; his clothes 
mean; his heart timid; his outlook hopeless. I see 
spring to life long lines of other boys, who today are 
gray. Did not each of us know his own problems ? Did 
not each heart know its own trouble? And yet! And 
yet ! believe me ! I can hear high-intoning the voice of 
the preacher, the white-haired saint whom I saw lying 
one fair morning with face to the sea and the peace of 
God in his eyes — all mysteries revealed, I can hear his 
voice speaking of the sacred things that kept me on and 
on. Yea, they encouraged and sustained many a boy, 
to whom the future held no financial promise even 
though the comfort were to be found in the "sparrow's 
fall." 

It is all a medley. But it is a shrine. It all brings 
back the loitering scholar shuffling in to escape the eye 
of the monitor ; the student cribbing his delayed studies 
under the prayer book ; the ruffled hair ; the inadequate 
garb hidden by long coats. And yet we recall little but 
that deeper religious significance, deeper than we would 
then have admitted, that we brushed aside as boys and 
girls and find again among our treasures as the day 
declines. 

O ! Boys of the old eighties ! You did sneak back 
into chapel, this year when you went back again to 
school, did you not? You took your hat off in rever- 
ence and stood awhile with a lump in the throat and a 
tear in the eye as you sought a seat where once a child 
sat. Who was he! What was he! A homely child. 



70 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

perchance ! A strange looking simulacrum of what is 
now "you." Poor little homesick onery chap! Poor 
little devil ; poor little cuss. Your pity does you honor 
if coupled with it is the conviction that it is not merely 
a matter of forty years. If you were "you" then, and 
you are "you" now, what may not you be, in some 
fairer land? How may not God reclothe you? What 
garb may this indomitable spirit of ours not assume — 
this thing that dies not but stands aside today and pities 
and loves and weeps the passing body. 

Yes ! Yes ! I saw it all there in our old chapel, in 
the dim light and amid the ghostly forms of old boys. 
I saw victorious crews march up the broad aisle to 
music. I saw lock-stepped boys, arms about each other, 
passing out of chapel for the last time as students in 
the saddest custom of school life ! I heard Harry Chap- 
man sing. And I am sure that I saw Faith re-incar- 
nate and the body put under the feet of the spirit and 
the soul enlarged and the life of man as a span in the 
infinite. You should always go back to chapel and there 
bow at the shrine of your eternal youth of spirit, the 
spirit of your college and your intrepid faith. There 
are no dead upon these seats among the ghostly lads 
who seem to shine up with tender faces into yours! 
For they say to you : "Son of my youth ! Be strong ! 
for amid all things that pass there abideth these three, 
faith, hope, love." And for my part, I can bend over 
the old, time-worn bench and take the lad to myself and 
go out quite satisfied with gray hairs, having the lad 
yet in my heart. 




ON "SPRING AND DAISIES" 

HIS is a title of one of Leigh Hunt's lovely fa- 
miliar essays, and none was more simple in 
his appeal or more fine in his discriminations 
than this gentle soul who wrote so persist- 
ently of the common themes of his times. 
His English daisy does not come so far 
from our common weed as you may suppose, and Eng- 
lishmen love them so much. We do not affect the Mar- 
guerite as they do and we rather dislike it in the fields 
among the hay crop. But the English cultivate it for 
its extra large size and its true beauty — one of the love- 
liest of the common weeds of America. The finer, 
smaller English daisy we cultivate equally in our 
gardens. 

Leigh Hunt calls on Shakespeare for most of his 
inspiration in his essay and then runs through all of 
the poets — so that the daisy of our fields and gardens 
is probably of all flowers most in poetry. Chaucer has 
his say; Spenser has his; Shakespeare is at it all of 
the time; what a wonderful little flower that thus 
comes and goes and sends the thoughts of all of these 
poets winging afar ! 

Of course, after all, it is not the flower at all. It is 
spring running through the poet's mind. Leigh Hunt 
says (and see how he wrote much as we might write 
today) : "Then the young green!" This is the most 
apt and perfect mark of the season — the true issuing 
of spring. The trees and bushes are putting forth their 
crisp fans ; the lilac is loaded with buds ; the meadows 
are thick with the bright young grass, running into 



72 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

sweeps of white and gold with the daisies and the but- 
tercups. The orchards announce their riches in a 
shower of blossoms. The earth in fertile woods is 
spread yellow and blue with carpets of primroses, vio- 
lets and anemones, over which the birch trees, like 
stooping nymphs, hang with their thickening hair. 
Lilies of the valley, columbines, stocks, lady-smocks 
and the intensely red peony which seems to anticipate 
the full glow of summer time, all come out to wait on 
the season, like fairies from their subterranean pal- 
aces. Who is to wonder that the idea of love mingles 
itself with that of this cheerful and kind time of the 
year, setting aside even common associations. It is 
not only its youth and its beauty and budding life and 
the passion of the groves that exclaim with the poet, 
"let those love now who never loved before, and those 
who always loved, now love the more." 

But, I did not set out to speak of the spring so much 
as the daisy. One can write about spring a great deal 
better in the winter than he can when the fields are 
"with daisies pied" or "with lady-smocks all silver 
white." The winter makes me think of spring and 
fills my throat with all of its longings ; while in sum- 
mer, I see the long sweep of the majestic snows out of 
hyperborean lands come riding on the gale and with 
lullaby softer than the cooing birds, lascivious with 
their love-making. 

The Latins called this common white flower of ours 
with its heart of gold "bellus" or belHs, which means 
"sweet one," or "nice one," or "beautiful one." The 
French gave it the same name as that which they give 
to a pearl. Marguerite, or Margarita, or by way of 
special endearment, Margherita. Chaucer says of it 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 73 

ill his lovely poem of the Flower and the Leaf, as of the 
lady who began to sing right womanly a bargaret in 
the praising of the daisie : "As for me," says Chaucer, 
"thought I among her notes sweet, she said, *Si douset 
est la Margarete." In other words the lady said, "Our 
Margaret is so sweet." Ben Jonson says of them, 
"Day's-eyes and the lippes of cows." 

We cannot make a floral album of the poets. We 
can, however, go afield this summer with a new love 
for the common flower that has inspired so much from 
Chaucer to Burns toward love of Nature. I would in 
all ways, turn your thoughts in that way — to the yellow 
and white of fields, to the blue of hills, to the pageant 
of nature. You will be so much better content at 
things that you can never change by rebellion or scold- 
ings or reprisals. It would do all of us good to love 
Beauty more and money less. It would make us all 
forget so many brief ills of earth, if we loved the com- 
mon daisy a bit more and saw in Spring something of 
the revival of our own spirituality- 



ON "PEONIES" 




OMETHING sort of choked in my throat today 
as once again I saw the peonies coming into 
bloom in the garden, for peonies that bloom 
have mostly been planted by other hands, 
long since laid folded away under other blos- 
soms. Grandmother called them "pinies" and 
they were her treasures, huge red "pinies" that she felt 
sure to be superior to any other that grew. They blos- 
somed alongside the graveled walk that led up through 
the little garden of hollyhock, tall and gaudy, peonies 
red as blood and deep in their hearts the stamens of 
yet unfolded beauty. We brushed them as we walked 
and saw them as mere flowers. To her they were as 
gifts out of her store of God's special beneficence. She 
took them to church for the minister's desk; she took 
them to school for the closing day's exhibition; she 
took them to weddings and funerals and in the old par- 
lor a great mass of them stood in a great blue bowl — 
pinies, sweet and lovely pinies, that gave her a certain 
unique standing in the community. 

So, I see them today coming along again and I notice 
how little attention we busier people give to this his- 
toric flower — so old as to pass far back into history. 
Cleopatra may have worn them; other and earlier 
queens of Asia and Africa may have picked them and 
pressed them to their bosoms. Queens of the Ming 
dynasty may have dug about their roots in the long 
ago; for they came early from lands of the Mongols, 
the Tartars, the Chinese and all through Southern 
Europe. I fancy that some early Puritan lifted the 
peony from the English garden and brought the bulb 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 75 

along to add a touch of home to the rough world of 
Plymouth. There are peonies in New England so old 
that no man knoweth their genesis. 

We used to know only the red peony. But it has 
no finer ancestry than the white peony. Do flowers 
chiefly take their color from the country — these racial 
flowers like the peony? The white peony came from 
snowy Siberia where it was given perfume to com- 
pensate it for the loss of that superb and opulent crim- 
son, that fairly sparkles like the deeps of old wine. 
The snow is in its heart ; but the odor of roses is on its 
effluence. Do you know anything more lovely than the 
white peony, the tips of its petals slightly violet or 
pink, deepening into a suspicion of rose, its centre as 
of pure cream and shading into ivory ! Can you fancy 
anything lovelier than these flowers. And so, admit- 
ting their perfection, can you avoid a sense of wonder 
as to why God made them, unless he intends us all to 
be finally built up into a similar state of beauty? 

I have a peony patch that calls to mind those long 
since gone. These peonies came from my old home. 
They were planted long ago in that town by one most 
dear to me. I always wanted some of them in my 
garden. One day, unknown to me, some of their roots 
were brought up here and planted by a friend. It was 
in the autumn. In the spring they began to grow and 
when I first saw their blossoms, I thought it was a 
miracle. I knew them ! Great white, wonderful, lovely 
peonies ! Immediately I set about solving the mystery 
and learned it from my old home. Those peonies 
blooming so gorgeously carry, therefore, reminiscences 
beyond any other flower in the world. They speak of a 
line of succession far back beyond my memory. They 



76 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

link the present with the past. They call to mind a suc- 
cession of Junes, dreamy and young, in old gardens, 
where roses bloomed and apple trees flung their petals 
about like snow, and lilacs scented the air, and where 
moonlight lay upon the old flagging that led through 
the sagging gate to the open door. 

Alas and alas ! How little we know what may stir 
our children's children. How little we know what 
simple thing may be our own memorial. It may be a 
tall elm in the dooryard, a peony bloom by the garden 
path. Sufficient if, in some later day, when we are 
gone and nigh forgotten, someone stirs vagrant mem- 
ories by recalling us through the simple flower; or 
stops, in June, to look deep into the heart of the peony, 
to see once again, the visions of the old homes, and old 
family circles which time has dissolved, leaving only 
the perennial of beauty in the flower and in the hearts 
of children and of children's children. 




ON "THE VALUE OF CHARACTER" 

OMMERCIAL value of character is my sub- 
ject — not the spiritual and abstract value, 
such as it may be. 

Years ago, in this city, lived two good 
men — Deacon William Libbey, first cashier 
of the Manufacturers National Bank, and 
Deacon Badger, a customer at that bank. Each was a 
man of deep, abiding Christian faith, each with char- 
acter, each a deacon of the Baptist church. 

One day, late in the afternoon, Deacon Badger rat- 
tled the door of the bank and Deacon Libbey who was 
still on the job, behind locked doors, saw who it was 
and opened the door as has been done a thousand times. 
The customer came in, the cashier passed behind his 
desk and they did business. As the result. Deacon 
Badger was passed over through the wicket, in the 
regular course of business, two hundred dollars, in new 
banknotes, crisp and crinkly. 

Deacon Badger gathered up the money and stood a 
while talking about church matters. Then he be- 
thought himself to count the money as a matter of 
habit. He always had counted money; he always 
would. 

It was twenty dollars short. 

Deacon Libbey took the money over to count in the 
full amount and he, too, found it twenty dollars short. 
He looked at Deacon Badger and said, "You have 
dropped the other twenty on the floor. I gave you ten 
of them, I counted them twice. Look about a bit. 
You will find it." Together they searched Deacon 
Badger's pockets, they searched the floor, the money 



78 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

drawer; the surroundings. The twenty dollars was 
gone. Deacon Libbey said that he had given Badger 
the twenty ; Deacon Badger said he had never received 
it, and so the two old Christians stood like lions at bay, 
each looking the other in the eye ; each declaring that 
the other was wrong; each beginning to harbor faint 
suspicions that the other had at last fallen from grace 
and begun to tread the primrose path that leads to — 
we all know where. 

I have often told this story and it takes on added 
humor to me each time that I tell it. I can fancy noth- 
ing more funny than these two old-fashioned incor- 
ruptibles alone there in that bank harboring suspicions 
each of the other. If you had known them — their 
type — you would yourself see the humor of it as keenly. 
They were both genuine goodly men — REALLY good 
men, I mean. 

Deacon Badger could not call Deacon Libbey a liar 
and a thief, because Deacon Libbey could not call Dea- 
con Badger a liar and a thief. In the tense air of the 
little bank so many years ago, all that each of these 
men had for support in the time of trial was the spot- 
less trail behind him. Had Deacon Badger or Deacon 
Libbey ever so much as leaned once toward wrong, he 
would have gone down to a dishonored grave, for the 
solution of the mystery came not until long after both 
of them had passed on and been laid away in the odor 
of sanctity. This was the commercial value of char- 
acter. Only by reason of this was a tragedy averted. 

Deacon Badger said to Deacon Libbey, "William, 
you are a good man. You have never cheated or stolen. 
There is something about this that we do not under- 
stand. I will assume half the loss and you will assume 
the other half." 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 79 

Deacon Libbey said to Deacon Badger: "Deacon, 
I know that you would not intentionally do wrong. I 
know that I counted the money correctly and that I 
passed it to you. There is something we do not under- 
stand. Possibly God is trying out our capacities for 
charity to each other, our trust in Him. I will stand 
half of the loss," 

So the old worthies after half an hour of breathless 
concern, agreed to forget it and each paying his half, 
went his way to think his own thoughts, ever tinged 
with the divine injunction, "Judge not, lest ye be 
judged." 

And as the years rolled on they died and the bank 
had a new cashier and finally outgrew its little quar- 
ters and moved over to larger ones. In the process of 
moving they tore away the old counters over which 
Deacon Libbey had passed the $200. And in behind 
the counter, laid snugly between the mahogany board- 
ing and the back of a drawer was a clean, new twenty 
dollar bill. 

Deacon Libbey's successor knew what it was. Often 
had the story been rehearsed to him. And he saw at 
once how it had occurred. In pushing over the new 
money the thin edge of one of the bank-notes had 
caught in the crack and the bill had been pushed down 
into this tiny space. And there it had lain for years 
and years. 

Moral! As you please. But character is worth 
something. 




ON "THE LITTLE VILLAGE" 

OU FIND them now and then, aloof, detached, 
those old-fashioned little hamlets, untouched, 
as it would seem, by the urban influence of 
the times. Dear little places, whose simplicity 
arouses a longing for their acquaintance and 
a dream in the back of the head of happiness 
therein, such as is not to be found in the rush and fret 
of cities. 

There was one as we went along our way the other 
day, upon which we came unexpectedly and where we 
lingered awhile shortly after the noon hour, unnoticed, 
save for a woman shaking a tablecloth from a near-by 
piazza, and a stray dog or two, that came sniffing 
around our automobile. And it made us homesick and 
ruminative. And all of the while the monotone of 
water running over a little dam by the mill and a clear 
May sky overhead. 

No railroad trains or trolleys run into one of these 
towns or villages, whichsoever you may choose to call 
them. They bask in the May sunshine as peacefully 
as they ever did and the rows of white houses with 
green blinds stretch away for a street and peter out 
into broader gardens and finally into fields. The elms 
are budding and leafing out. The lilacs are swelling. 
The dandelions are gemming the lawns with yellow. 

There is one store and but one. It has a long ve- 
randa with a hitching rail for horses, suggestive of the 
past. You find much in it that you did not expect to 
find and fail to find much that you might expect to 
find. In May, it will not be filled with loafers as it 
might be in winter, especially in February, just before 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 81 

town-meeting. Somehow it smells of past worthies and 
of salt cod and leather boots. It also smells of grind- 
stones, hardware, kerosene oil, chocolate drops, chew- 
ing gum, blue denim and corn poppers. I can look it 
over with my mind's eye and see a freckled-faced lad 
looking longingly into the fly-specked showcase hun- 
gering for penny chocolate cream bars. 

There is a mill pond ! Ah, so quiet now. Save for 
the dripping of the cool water over the stones and the 
twittering of sparrows in the eaves. There is an "ice- 
cream parlor" which is the only truce to modernity in 
the place. And for the rest, the home of a village 
doctor who rides all over the surrounding country and 
who lives in a little white house with a sagging piazza, 
back of some apple trees in a scrubby front yard and 
whose yard is full of children. There is a blacksmith 
shop even yet in this village, though the ruts of the 
road are made by automobile and the blacksmith is 
willing to tinker the tin-lizzies as they come his way. 
The pond comes up to the street almost and the mill 
race empties into it, on the near side of the bridge. 

The churches lift their spires ; for there are always 
at least two of them. The schoolhouses fly their flags. 
The grange hall stands barn-like but suggestive of vil- 
lage oratory and happy socials. The cornshop is 
empty in May, but makes us think of busy days of 
August. The wind ruffles the waters of the pond. The 
clouds float fleecy-like overhead. 

Here, then, is a town, untouched by time. It holds 
within its guardian love the elements of old New Eng- 
land country life. It has no secrets from itself. It 
knows all of its own pains, hopes, griefs, births, deaths. 



82 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

accidents, disappointments and successes. It calls it- 
self by its first name. It reads daily papers, but there 
are yet some who "take in" a weekly, from the neigh- 
boring shire town. It lives keenly and yet might do 
better in that respect. For how little it appreciates the 
hills that beckon ; the peace that sings it to sleep ; the 
birds that carol of a dawn; the high noon of sleepy, 
dozy dreaminess; the starlit nights when Arcturus 
winks in cloudless, dust-proof skies and the rainy 
Hyades belie the night. How little, indeed, it realizes 
the manifold blessings of its own aloofness — away 
from markets and from mischief ; away from care and 
fret of contact with problems of the times ; away from 
the passions of life, its call to the hatred of competi- 
tion and the fight for subsistence. Here nature with 
her generous hand spreads the table of the poor as 
well as of the rich ; here the realms of God come close 
to earth and mingle with it in a thousand ways. Here 
one might rest — yes, even rest. 



ON "A PERSONAL MATTER 



ff 




WUZ jest a week ergo terday, ut I come home 
an' hit the hay; I warn't sick! Fer, ez I 
said ter you, 'twarn't the pip an' 'twarn't 
the flu; jest a feelin' restless-like, waitin' 
fer the hour to strike, when I'd leave the 
harnts of men, and fish an' be a boy agen. 
Wa-a-1 ! Here I be, jest ez I was ; hain't no reason, 
hain't no cause, hain't got no tempera-toor, hain't got 
no disease, fer sure; more like a onery ailin' pup; 
nothin' seems ter chirk me up ; looked myself square in 
the face an' couldn't diagnose the case; called in the 
Doc, young Doc Joe. He says, "Inter bed yer go!'* 
Here I be jest ez I was, hain't no reason, hain't no 
cause. 

'Tain't my head ; fer I think right smart ; 'tain't my 
liver an' 'tain't my heart; 'tain't stomach ner gout! 
Then, gol darn me, 'tain't nuthin' at all, as I kin see. 
An' yet here I lay, like a caow that's cast, without no 
trouble that's like ter last. Thought I'd found what 
the matter wuz; waitin' fer the bee ter buzz; but 
hain't perked up a little bit an' don't seem to keer if 
the bird don't flit; got no time ter lissen for crows, all 
I kin do is blow my nose ; don't keer a rap ef the ducks 
do swarm; too darn busy keepin' warm; ain't con- 
cerned erbout the vi'lets bloom, couldn't smell their 
sweet perfume; what's the use of the woods, in yer 
eager ear, if yer head's plugged up and yer fail ter 
hear. By thunder! I wonder! what's the matter, me 
jest a layin' here, flatter an' flatter ! By snum, I'm so 
sore in spots, reckon I must hev the botts ; every time 
I blow my nose, it pulls a toe nail off 'n my toes ; my eyes 



84 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

both ache like an old burnt boot an' they're dancin' a 
clog on the bridge of my snoot; an' I don't want ter eat 
and I don't want ter drink, an' I don't want ter sleep 
an' I hate ter think, thet after what I said ter you, 
'tain't the pip an' 'tain't the flu. 

Jest outside my winder pane, I kin see a wintry 
plain and a tall spruce tree that stands, bearing snows 
within its hands; and a barberry, crimson-red, with 
the frosts upon its head, and a long an' windin' hill, 
storm-swept, driftin' cold an' still, tall elms, arms like 
tattered sails bendin' to the winter gales, clouds that 
come a bendin' low, spittin' little flakes of snow; sun 
gone down an' in my room nothin' but a touch o' gloom ; 
many little gales that come, beat my windows like a 
drum; and they off en bring, ter me, far-off roarin' 
like the sea. 

So after manner o' my kind I can sorter be re- 
signed ; no man ain't exactly shet of everything that he 
can't get. If with Spring, the world ain't dressed, 
p'raps we'll favor winter best; here I be jest ez I was, 
hain't no reason, hain't no cause, but I kin shut my 
eyes, yer know, an' see the pine trees fight the snow, 
and seem to rest all snug an' still, on some wind-swept, 
pastur-hill; an' dream of lying safe and warm, well 
away from earthly harm. Funny how yer fancy builds 
camp-fires on these snowy hills. Funny how there's 
offen gain, when yer bones is full of pain. Funny 
what yer visions do, even when you've got the flu. 
Funny how the banners dip, even when you've got the 
pip. 'Tain't so drefful hard to lie, with your business 
passin' by; ef, by snum, yer only knew, 'TWUZ the 
pip, er 'TWUZ the flu. 




ON "THE ETIQUETTE OF 
SWIMMIN' " 

F I REMEMBER aright we had a high sign, 
useful in the slow hours of the afternoon in 
the old schoolhouse when the flies droned on 
the window pane and bumble bees came sail- 
ing on lazy wing past the sun-swept vista 
through the open windows. It may have been 
June ; probably was. It may have been a drowsy day 
when nature was surfeiting herself with sweets and 
when the cow-bell tinkled afar, suggesting velvet mead- 
ows and rioting buttercups and boys stretching on the 
sward, with waiting cur-dogs round about, loafing, too. 
What a liar was he who said "time flies." Time halts in 
such circumstance. Time moves backward in its flight, 
on such a day. The old clock never budges, as a boy 
with bursting head, waits the time when he shall leap 
forth, every fibre suddenly animated, every corpuscle 
rioting. 

In those moments, with everything calling, with 
thoughts of laving in waters that shall curl through 
our toes and cool our backs we threw the high sign, 
over the school. Two fingers of the right hand held 
up in the form of a "V" — ^the other fingers closed. Im- 
mediately, the faces clear ; the sign runs silently around 
the room. Frowsly red-heads lift. Freckle-faced boys 
become young Apollos. Animation takes the place of 
despondency and we know that there will be doings at 
the old swimmin' hole. 

It hath never been determined how old this sign 
may be. I doubt not it is three hundred or four hun- 
dred years old. I doubt not that boys still use it. 



86 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Caesar may have swung the high sign aloft when he 
put up a proposition to bathe with his classmates la 
the Tiber or Horace in the Digentia. But at least it 
has made many a boy happy. You do not have to be 
reminded how it eased the slow toiling hours of the 
afternoon. You do not have to be reminded with what 
a shout we burst out of the schoolhouse and away, cap 
in hand and trousers ready to fall at the sight of open 
water. Nor do you require much reminder of hap- 
penings at the old swimmin' hole. 

There was etiquette about it. Last one in! First 
one out ! Do I have to remind you of what sometimes 
happened. Much of it was primal. Much of it was 
animal — for boys are animals. We wore little but a 
pair of trousers and a cotton shirt with galluses 
strapped over the back most always made of cotton and 
never "boughten." We wore no underclothes in sum- 
mer, no shoes or stockings, and we required little prep- 
aration for the bath. In early spring a boy was for- 
tunate if he could have his head shingled and thereby 
avoid the troubles of drying his hair. For it was some- 
times a troublesome matter — the number of times a 
boy went in swimmin* in any given day. And mother 
often had a way of feeling of a boy's hair. 

If there were no tragedies at the swimmin' hole I 
am a liar. Many a boy have I seen who, having of- 
fended a brother, comes late from the water to find his 
clothes tied in knots. And believe me, a boy at one end 
of a cotton shirt-tail and another boy at the other, both 
pulling in opposite directions, can do a deal of knotti- 
ness. Oft have we seen, all of us, a bawling boy, shiv- 
ering in the wind, trying to untie the knots in his shirt 
or trousers, while the other boys chased home over the 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 87 

meadows. There was etiquette about diving and about 
taking turns and about swimmin' under water and com- 
ing up under a boy and about pulling him under and 
about splashing water upon him when he had dried off. 
I heard the other day about a family of boys where 
they were not allowed to go in swimming until July 
1st. The father of these children is a doctor. I can't 
understand it. How any father can believe that he can 
keep boys from going in swimming until the coming of 
July 1st, beats my reckoning. Of course when I was 
a boy we did not have baths in winter at all. The wash 
tub was frozen and the pump was not fitted with hot 
water. Mother used to give us the once-over Saturdays 
in winter — sometimes. She could not, dear soul, find 
time to chase a lot of boys around and make them 
bathe. So we always appointed Memorial Day as the 
date for the first swim, no matter how cold the water. 
I don't remember of dying or being drowned. We al- 
ways took a boat and went down river and had a picnic 
and went in swimming, on the side. Our ablution was 
a monster and our reaction was a fright. I have shaken 
so on cold Memorial Days that my teeth loosened. 

But it was a part of our etiquette — ^the same as the 
high sign, same as the punishment for snobby boys, 
and as the other rules of every-day swimmin'. I expect 
to go to Heaven. I expect to swim in the river of life 
some time. But I never expect to be happier even 
there, than I have been when the fingers went up, over 
the little old schoolhouse, and we leaped forth, a gang 
of boys, for the old swimmin' hole. 




ON "GOING BERRYING" 

F ALL things, the most conducive to philosophy 
and invention is going berrying. It is an in- 
tellectual pursuit mingled vi^ith practical ac- 
quisition. It comes in the class with deep- 
sea fishing, bee-hunting, digging clams and 
writing poetry. It cannot be exactly classi- 
fied. It is — just berrying. 

From the general consideration of this important 
subject, I exclude strawberrying. I call that work. It 
does not classify with any other kind of berrying. You 
have to dig down in the long grasses where no breezes 
blow and sweat and stifle with hay-fever to pick straw- 
berries. Nobody who is over eight years old can enjoy 
bending over to pick strawberries. Raspberrying has 
its objectionable features. The berries grow in difficult 
masses and the biggest berries are always in the centre 
of the bushes. To reach them, one must shut his eyes ; 
grab his pants tightly around him ; hang onto his coat- 
tails, and with a selection from the scripture by way of 
comfort, dash through the barbed wire entanglements 
to the point of raspberry objectives. I prefer black- 
berries as a matter of determination. The spines are 
more spur-like, it is true, but one can circumvent the 
high bush blackberry better than he can a bunch of 
treacherous raspberries. It is an exercise of pure 
strategy to pick blackberries and you get something 
when you reach them. They are not all squash-bugs 
and sometimes ten of them will fill a pint dipper- 

The best berrying is the huckleberry — the high bush 
huckleberry. Next to that give me the blueberry. You 
can sit down to the blueberry; you can stand to the 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 89 

huckleberry. No briars, no stooping, no squash-bugs, 
but only a wind-swept knoll where no wild thyme 
grows — or something like it, and there you go to it and 
strip the glossy black berry called the huckleberry and 
hear them go tinkling into the pail. 

But this is not the thing. The thing in blueberry- 
ing or huckleberrying is the fun of it. It is best to 
go alone or to take some young person with you. It 
is unwise for two grown people to go huckleberrying 
together. It degenerates into a thing approaching 
work. What you want is a quiet, freckle-faced boy 
about ten years old. He will afford you oppportunity 
for philosophic divagation. He will give you oppor- 
tunity to think. He will call on you for information 
on common things. He will assist you in loafing. 
He will want to run about and stand on hilltops and 
let the wind blow around his ears and speculate on the 
clouds and ask what makes the humming sound when 
the breezes stir the pines. A boy is not so particular 
about filling his pail that he will not have time to chase 
a woodchuck. By all means take a small boy. Never 
go huckleberrying with your wife or anybody else's 
wife. It is no fun. 

So far as I am concerned, it is not a matter of get- 
ting the berries. It is the semi-contemplative mood 
that hypnotizes me into complete acquiescence with 
the plan of nature when I go berrying, that catches 
me every time I see a berry-patch. It provides you 
just enough physical relaxation to induce thought. It 
sets your mental machinery going just like a fine new 
dynamo running in the bath of a lubricant. It is not 
exactly "thought" that you do; it is that lovely, beau- 
tiful, delicious state of mind known as "meditation." 



90 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

You pick a berry and you do it unconsciously while 
you see the cloud, hear the bee, watch the butterfly, 
wondering all the while about everything. On one 
hand, you have the physical action of a gentle sort; 
on the other you have the meditation and, the two 
combined, superinduce a state of such perfect equilib- 
rium that you feel like a sleeping street of a country 
village in noon of a September day. It's the poise 
that you get. You can't get it anywhere else. You 
settle questions about life that never could be settled 
elsewhere — settle them for yourself, I mean, not for 
other people. 

Yes : Fishing is fun ; hunting is fun ; golf is some- 
times fun; but all piffle as compared with the rare 
and unusual avocation of blueberrying and huckle- 
berrying. When the sky is full of clouds, when the 
sun is warm and the wind is fresh; after the hay is 
in and before the snows come — go berrying. And 
come home with a full mind, whether the pail be empty 
or not. 




ON "THE OLD PEDLERS' CART' 

FRIENDLY correspondent recalls to me the 
old-fashioned tin-pedler as a fading mem- 
ory — possibly still traveling up and down 
the macadam roadways, but by and large — 
becoming extinct. 

I have wondered if it is not, perhaps, a 
distinct service to preserve memories of these old- 
fashioned things. As the days come and go, it does 
seem as tho there come more frequent responses from 
readers along the line of those things that seem to 
recall the quainter features of that simpler New 
England life, such as occasional letters, frequent 
passing comment. It is as tho recollection stirred 
deeper sympathies and the finer instincts of those 
who love to recall the days that are gone. Perhaps if 
someone who has the faculty, were to write a book on 
old Maine habits, customs, social life, dress, pecuHari- 
ties and penchants, it might in some day be of value 
to historians and even to scholars. 

I seem to remember swift-flying feet from down 
the dusty road and the voice of a brother shouting, 
"The Pedler's here !" and to see thru the leafy barrage 
of the apple trees the red sheen of the pedler's cart 
drawn up before our old back door. To those who 
dwelt far in the country, the dust of the pedler's cart 
was never unwelcome as his slow-shuffling old gray 
horse — it seems always to have been gray — came our 
way. It was a terrible disappointment if we boys 
were away fishing, or after the cows, or at the swim- 
min' hole, when the pedler came. He had Jonathan 
Crookes knives, for instance, and altho we had small 



92 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

chance of getting one, it was a pleasure to see one. 
He had drawers that pulled out of the back of his cart 
that had treasures far beyond the dreams of avarice. 
He had a silent way of indifference about him that 
never seemed to sit well on a person acquainted with 
such ineffables. 

The old tin pedler's cart was always about the 
same in appearance ; high over the horse ; seat perched 
well up in the air; top covered with barrels and pails 
perched on stakes ; bait for the horse ; bundles of rags 
and barter from the house-wife; butter kits; firkins; 
and for the rest a smooth, well-enclosed vehicle almost 
always painted red. Just beneath the seat was the 
name of the pedler (sometimes — not always) and 
usually these mystic letters, "Licensed by C. C." — what 
it meant, a mystery to me now as then — ^but variously 
interpreted, until at last we came to consider it a 
special fact to be aired among boys; to be mentioned 
as a show of information and to be hollered out behind 
the cart as it went along the way. The pedler had a 
very slow method of trade. Mother always came out 
and stood under the apple-tree with her apron up 
under her arms and in summer little beads of sweat 
on her chin — very anxious to have her tussle at trade 
and barter with the pedler. Mother was a very 
shrewd buyer — so we thought. How she would haggle 
and debate with the peddler. Didn't she give him some 
good ones ! How we would chuckle and roll on the 
grass and shout as she talked back to him and told 
him how high his prices were and what a cheat he was. 
The pedler would unlock the side of the animal that 
he called a cart, but which we thought more wonder- 
ful than the wooden horse that captured Troy and 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 93 

that we knew about in our school books. The insides 
of the creature fairly shone with tin pans and pots 
and kettles and brooms and crocks and pails and 
churn-dashers and wooden butter bowls and butter 
stamps and strainers and mortars and pestles and 
coffee-grinders and tea-pots and glass ware and well — 
what was there not? Never was such glistening 
tin-ware ; it does not shine so dazzingly, nowadays. 

And then he would go around to the back of the 
cart and open up the back-doors and begin to pull out 
little drawers in the contraption — such stores of essen- 
tial domesticities! Thread and needles; pins and 
hair-pins; hanks of linen thread — cutlery, jack- 
knives — oh, dear! It is like a dream — all of it, out 
there with mother a regular spendthrift of egg-money 
and the savings of the meagre cash that came to her 
hand. Such eggs as she would pass over to the pedler 
in barter! Such butter as she would lovingly pack 
into the pedler's bucket for him to sell at the village 
store, whither he was traveling. Eggs that now are 
worth their weight in gold; butter that, in our house, 
had the sweetness of the clover and the fragrance of 
the honey of the honey-comb. 

Under the apple-trees with the bees a-humming and 
the branches swaying and the old horse with loosened 
head-stall cropping the lush greensward of the old 
door-yard ; only a picture out of the past ! The pedler 
has gone. The old farm has gone. The old folks are 
gone. What remains! Only the memories that are 
sacred! Nothing whatever left to us, save the hope 
that the picture may be flashed on the screen again, 
elsewhere ! with the pedler's nag cropping the pastures 




94 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

of the Asphodel ; mother again in the foreground with 
apron in her folded arms, and the visualization as 
permanent as the eternities themselves! 



ON "THE VAGABOND" 

E is no mere tramp, carrying his rags and his 
urbanity all over the earth, reading news- 
papers, riding on trains, merely escaping 
the servitude of work, without losing the 
crowds and the impulse of others. 

The Vagabond is none of these. Those 
who think so, lose sight of the crown and sceptre of 
the vagabond. The vagabond carries his soul with 
him and is a vagabond because he would take his soul 
out into the open and give it freedom under the clear 
airs of heaven. 

It is a primal force, this vagabondage. Some na- 
tions have been vagabonds from time immemorial 
and may be time without end. They are nomad from 
inheritance; they live under the stars and in the des- 
erts or on mountain sides where one mountain is like 
another, each calling as to some dear distant pasture 
which is ever yet more beautiful. Free highlanders 
have ever been the most delightful and warlike of 
vagabonds as have certain nations who have been vaga- 
bonds of the sea. These are the rovers who have 
never any joy, except in things beyond the horizon, 
strange ports won after struggle, idyls in spice-lands, 
dreams of royal delights under languorous moons. 

Every person whom you see moving around, is not 
alive. Far from it. Some merely exist; others are 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 95 

quite dead. They have a fixity of life comparable to 
the cucumber-vine that never gets beyond the spread 
of its root. "Afoot and light-hearted," sings Walt 
Whitman, "I take to the open road. Healthy and free, 
the world before me, the long brown path leading 
wherever I choose. Henceforth, I ask not good for- 
tune — I, myself, am good fortune. Henceforth I 
whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. 
Strong and content, I travel the open road. * * * 
The soul travels. The body does not travel so much 
as the soul. The body has just as great a work as the 
soul, and parts away, at last, for the journeys of the 
soul. Allons ! The road is before us ! it is safe — I 
have tried it — my own feet have tried it well." This 
is the song of Life, the voyaging of the soul and body ; 
the epic of vagabondage. 

I would not counsel over much vagabondage — pos- 
sibly there is enough as it is, except the swimming of 
the soul beyond the limits of the shore which costs but 
little either of time, money or effort; but unlimited 
roving amid contemplation lessens production. It is 
the lotus life. Yet there is plenty of excuse. Nature 
is very much of a vagabond. All things with wings 
are of vagabondia ; tumbling bees, loitering butterflies, 
evening breezes ruffling the lilacs and sending vaga- 
bond perfumes stealing over the memories of one's 
vagabond heart. Things that come across a summer 
day, such as painted moths and jeweled humming- 
birds, hopping toads on quests of the Infinite ; floating 
gulls white as snow against the blue, eagles in the air, 
distant sails on summer seas, tides against the shore, 
coming from other limits of earth, — no matter where 



96 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

you are, summer or winter, whether it be the vaga- 
bond rain-drops out of the sky, or the snow-flake that 
comes whirling down, as tho the angels were moult- 
ing, — all vagabond! 

Man is truly vagabond — not a tramp but out- 
journeying with his soul for company — only when he 
has mastered the truth that his Spirit is himself. He 
has become initiate with Life and will set out to build 
more stately mansions for his soul. He need not go 
far. A little way around the corner, if it please him. 
He may not be gone for such a time as to be missed 
from home. He may not sleep out of a night — altho 
we should advise it for the soul's good. He may not 
go farther than a forest of trees, that merely shuts 
out the light of the town and lets only the upper- 
radiance filter in; sobeit, his soul gets the benefit — he 
is of vagabondia. The vagabond takes no vows, but 
will learn all that vows could require — humility, 
gentleness, a song, a smile, a love-light in his eyes — 
for Love is a vagabond of vagabonds. 

I wish that all men and women would be vagabond 
some of the time. I wish that they would untie them- 
selves from all of their pet illusions, the necessities of. 
etiquette that mean nothing, the frumpery of toys and 
trumpets, and seek the beautiful secret of rest in this 
life, instead of waiting for it in the next. One need 
not go far. I do not urge a racketing around the 
world. But out there, outside of the ceaseless consid- 
eration of bank-balances; outside of the struggle for 
preferment; outside of the immediate issues of the 
day, there are hills, forests, pastures, the golden rap- 
ture of filtering lights and shades, and brooks and 
rivers and blue peaks and songs that sing thru forests 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 97 

as thru ^olian harps, set in niches of temples. And 
out there are comradeships and people that come and 
go, and souls that shiver at the thought of solitude. 



ON "MY FIRST JACKKNIFE" 

WAS about as big as a pint of cider — sweet 
cider, of course, to be within the law — and 
it was my first term in the grammar school, 
seven years old, barefoot in summer, and 
naturally big-eyed in a new school. 

I declare I never knew anything about 
scholarship prizes until one day the teacher, whose 
name was Julia Baker, and whom the boys called 
"Judy," took me on her lap and told me that I had 
won the prize for the first year of scholarship. And 
then she put in my sweaty little hand a new Jonathan 
Crookes jackknife, if you know what a Jonathan 
Crookes jackknife was fifty years ago ! None better ! 
None COULD be better! Two blades! keen, bright, 
shining, good stuff ! No other boy's knife could cut it, 
according to the old trick of putting edges together 
and seeing which edge could cut the other. Honor, 
dignity, good repute, a certain "class" rested on the 
boy who had a genuine Jonathan Crookes with its 
name stamped on the blade. There were traditions 
of "Barlows," but Jonathan Crookes would do! 
You bet ! 

Swift feet took me home that day, swift-flying 
feet to the anticipated plaudits of home, to the comfort 
of mother's arms, to the joy of father's good word, to 
the envy of brothers, to the high-stepped autocracy of 



98 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

the neighborhood. I reckon I didn't talce that knife 
around much that day. I kept it on the "mantel- 
piece" and kept going to it every hour to see if it 
were safe. 

Well! Life is a curious thing in the matter of 
possessions. I think sometimes that it is worth while 
to go without that you may enjoy the occasional prize 
well won. It is not well to shower toys on children 
lest they become cloyed — or as they used to say, "elide." 
But there was small fear in those days, as I recall. 
A jackknife, brand-new, was as a king's patent. No 
boy in my social set had its equal. 

Three days passed and I began to gain sufficient 
temerity to carry the Jonathan Crookes about with 
me in my trousers pocket. And then, one summer 
day, not one week after I got the knife, which was in 
July, I went berrying on the shores of Woolwich. The 
day passed comfortably. From time to time I felt 
for my knife and found it secure. Every hour I took 
it out and looked it over to see if its brightness were 
fading or if I were using it carelessly on damp twigs, 
that were liable to rust it. It shone, ineffably. 

And then, well along toward dusk, I felt for it 
and — my blood stopped in its courses, the sky and the 
river and the trees faded and the world grew black. 
It was gone ! Gone ! Gone ! and there a hole, just new- 
grown, in the corner of my pocket ! 

You needn't smile! This was the tragedy of my 
life. You possibly have had similar ones. Tell them, 
if you please, and I will hsten. But this one — alas! 
never anything else compared with it. I came to my 
senses and recalled feeling something slip down my 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 99 

leg. I thought I knew where I was when this hap- 
pened. I fled back blindly over rocks ; thru brambles ; 
in circles, here, there, everjrwhere, searching, and the 
night coming on. Not a trace of it. Often since then 
I have tried to picture myself, a child running frantic- 
ally over that wild, deserted region, mile on mile of 
bare rocks, thick underbrush, blueberry, blackberry 
and raspberry bushes, searching for that knife and 
sobbing like a fountain choked with weeds. I can see 
myself finally at a standstill, hope all gone, desolate, 
bereft, alone by the silent river, rather pathetic viewed 
impersonally, and later pulling the skiff home in the 
gathering night. I recall the frantic searchings of 
my family; the stories of the hunting party, thinking 
I was drowned, and I remember the scene as I told 
my tale in the apron of my mother. 

Many other days I searched those cliffs in vain. 
The little two-blader lies there today in rust. I never 
had another Jonathan Crookes. Nobody said: "Never 
mind; we'll get you another." Parents did not do 
things that way in those days. I fought out my dis- 
appointment and, by degrees, won against it; but a 
part of my little boy's heart lay with the Jonathan 
Crookes for many a day thereafter — tho perhaps I 
personally was strengthened and matured by its loss. 
Who can tell! Perhaps that was why I had it and 
why I lost it. We often grow richer by the things 
we lose, rather than by the things we have. Do not 
those whom we lay away with a piece of our hearts 
about them sometimes strengthen and bless us from 
where the grasses lift and the bluebells wave above 
them? I think so. 




ON "OLD-TIME BREAKING OUT 
OF ROADS" 

FTER a storm in old New England days, the 
roads were broken oiit with teams of oxen, 
breasting the deep drifts and burying their 
noses often half out of sight, while the winds 
flirted the snows and blew them high — a gay 
sight for those who love the pictures of bat- 
tling elements. 

I have counted twenty yokes of oxen on the lead 
trailing a huge triangle, that was drawn by main 
strength thru the piled-up barricade of cold, pure 
whiteness. On the sled rode the surveyor, giving his 
orders, while none but trained teamsters waved the ox- 
goads, their pants tucked in their boots, their faces 
red with the tang of the New England air, their 
scarves, usually red, blowing behind them like blotches 
of blood against the ermine of the snow. These team- 
sters needed but few words; they knew their teams; 
for long experience in the woods had made the team 
and teamster act as one. The mingled words of com- 
mand to the cattle made a sound of polyglot. You 
could hear them coming afar, with an occasional low 
of an ox, or the shout of a surveyor breaking clear 
on the frosty air as the team brfeasted a huge drift 
that called on all for united effort. 

The community sentiment in the breaking-out of 
roads was suggestive, and it always seemed wonderful 
that with so many men and so many oxen, the team- 
work could be effected in a village where there were 
no telephones; but it was a matter of understanding 
and pre-arrangement. The teamsters knew that they 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 101 

and their oxen would be needed after the night of 
the storm, when the winds had wailed and the windows 
had rattled and the eaves had moaned and the windows 
that looked out of the house had been darkened. The 
man of the house always bedded the cattle down a 
little better; gave a little extra grain to the oxen and 
was ready bright and early with the breaking of the 
storm for the attack. Sometimes it came with the 
dawn ; sometimes with the noon — immediately the sun, 
then came the breaking-out teams. 

A correspondent who writes us often of the old 
days, recalls the route of his district in Oxford County, 
Me., where the district started at Timothy Walker's 
barn and ended at Bethel town line. It might as well 
be any other district as this, either in Maine or Ver- 
mont or old Massachusetts. He says that altho the 
prohibitory law was working in Oxford County in 
those days, now and then an oasis appeared even in 
the bone-dry districts and the old hotel was a rendez- 
vous, maybe an inducement at the end of the route. 
Here on breaking-out days, a roaring fire burned in the 
old open fire-place, one of those monsters of rock-maple 
that threw heat dry, radiant, alive (as wood-fire blaze 
seems peculiarly to be), out into the open room where 
the teamsters gathered, stomping the snow from their 
feet and laying aside their frozen mittens and scarves. 
There was a bar, in the corner — yes, a bar! Here 
"George" stood, ready and waiting ; a red-faced George, 
fat and smiling, spicy and succulent "George." The 
cattle smoked with steam in the yard, swinging their 
heads, many of them blanketed and some of them fed 
with small wisps of hay. The crowd that had fol- 
lowed the teams flocked into the hotel. The air was 



102 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

in motion with the going and coming. The women 
came from the kitchen to see friends. Gossip passed 
to and fro from all over the district. Aches and pains 
and "doing well" or "rather poorly" were the phrases 
most often heard. The jokers had their way. The 
odor of nutmeg and other obsolete perfume, was on 
the air. If they "stayed to dinner" it was a great 
affair. Yes! They had fun; and they did service 
and they enjoyed it, and they were strong men and the 
women of strong men. And the hotel-yard was always 
well broken out. 

Cold did not frighten people much in those days. 
It is only a few years ago, seemingly, that we all went 
to the "oyster supper and a dance," at Chase's Mills — 
a mere sleigh ride of twenty miles below zero, with a 
girl tucked in by your side, and with a fast horse and 
the sleigh-bells all in tune, team after team, all in a 
race, up to the hotel, out and into the warmth of the 
fire, a dance in the hall, a supper, a dance after inter- 
mission, until the day began to break and home again — 
none the worse for the evening and no cripples in the 
bunch. Many a sleigh-ride have we seen with sixty 
turn-outs in it, all off for a dance until daylight, to a 
four-piece orchestra — down and up the outside; down 
and up the middle. 

Do we break out much of any nowadays? Very 
little! Life is being arranged so that even the snow 
is jazzed out of place by machinery. We are avoiding 
the drifts. We are softened by the fear of contact 
with the eager air. I am not going to get into the 
habit of bemoaning the old days. The present are 
lovely — many of them better than the old; but the 
breaking-out team does typify an element of that stern 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 103 

old life, that was not afraid of discomforts ; that never 
shirked the toil ; that never feared the cold ; that found 
fun where it was to be found, and that perhaps tasted 
sweeter companionship with your grandmother, fair 
and red-cheeked as a girl, tucked under the buffalo 
robe for a ten-mile sleigh ride to the music of the bells, 
than daughter does today, in an electric-heated coupe, 
behind closed windows, while the young man smokes 
a cigarette and dallies with the gas. 



ON "WHEN THE MINISTER CAME" 

N OLD New England the most important event 
in the household was the coming of the min- 
ister. He was apportioned to households, 
during protracted meetings, quarterly con- 
ferences and occasionally for mere pastoral 
visits to the community, agreeable to him and 
his scantily-fed wife — an ekeing out also of his salary, 
by way of savings. 

The Bible says of the Master, "Take no thought of 
what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink." But with 
certain casuistry, the housewife looked at this strictly 
from the minister's point of view. He was supposed 
to be following the direction of the Master confidently 
and the housewife did not intend that Faith in the 
providence of the Lord should suffer thru her inade- 
quacy. If the minister was to come in confidence, and 
without heed as to what he should eat or drink, she 
must do the cooking or the minister would be taking 
his Faith to another market and she would be in 
disgrace in the Sewing Circle. 




104 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

So there was tremendous preparation. The kitchen 
fairly rang with the batter of spoons on tin-ware 
while the trot of the good mother's footsteps gave no 
latitude to boys-under-foot. Father kept to the barn 
and went around with a subdued look of impending 
religion on his countenance. He knocked off swear- 
ing and the general conversation at the table was 
given a brushing up. "You must not say such things" 
was the common reproof. "You MIGHT forget and 
say it when the minister was here" — a mild hypocrisy, 
common enough in life and not altogether reprehen- 
sible, for it is good as far as it goes. Father sometimes 
cut out chewing fine-cut for a day or so, and nibbled at 
B. L. instead; as being more orthodox and hard-shell 
than fine-cut. Father always kept pretty still on the 
prelude to the minister's coming because mother gen- 
erally remarked that she might — not that she would 
have, bless her soul — but she might have married a 
minister once, or at least a chap who afterwards be- 
came a minister. Father sang small and, as I have 
said, kept to the barn. The cattle, at least, under- 
stood him. So did mother. 

Of course, in every old-fashioned New England 
family, everybody took a general bath, before the min- 
ister came, and the blue wash-tub was the busiest 
utensil in the family. Everybody from Sis to Bub 
was given the twice over; everybody worked but 
father; he went round as he was. 

Children considered the minister's coming as a 
mixed blessing — the bitter being a repression of 
animus, the sweet being an expression of appetite. 
One could not talk so much, but that was given over 
willingly for the opportunity to eat more. Savory 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 105 

odors, long smelt, never tasted, came to fruition. 
"Preserves" came out! A friend of mine, v^ho was 
brought up on an old-fashioned baby-farm (they were 
common in olden days) , recalls the barberry jam that 
was produced only when the minister came. He says 
that the little chaps on the "farm" never tasted it at 
other times and that they never permitted any to go 
to the dish-pan. They did the Jack Spratt act. It 
would have made a picture for Dickens' Nicholas 
Nickelby, at Squeer's school; those little urchins lap- 
ping the plates of the bright red barberry jam after 
the holy man had filled his stomach tight and then 
gone away to preach a sermon on "Feed My Lambs." 
Such things as happened when the minister visited ! 
Folk lore should be full of them, whereas we have 
chiefly the rather profane "Woodchuck story" where 
the boy simply HAD to get the woodchuck because 
the anathematized minister was coming to the house. 
We were sanctimonious little "cusses," so to speak, 
when the minister came. And what a tremendous 
impression it made on our lives. There is a man in 
our town who recalls that on his first trip to Boston, 
with his distinguished uncle, a great lawyer of National 
fame, now dead, he was set down at a wondrous table 
in a great New York hotel and given his choice of 
viands. And the poor little chap, with no other 
standards except the "minister's visits" as great occa- 
sions, ordered what mother used to cook for the min- 
ister — cold boiled ox-tongue. Yes! That was the 
best thing we knew of — appropriate to the orthodox! 
Cold tongue, soft and soothing, eminently innocent ; in 
life a symbol, in death a food! A little chap cannot 
invent viands, beyond his experience. 



106 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

The minister "eats around" now but infrequently. 
Bishops dine out and have dilRculty in holding the 
napkin upon their shiny aprons. Hotels are not inap- 
propriate to the clergy. Homes are closed tighter 
than in old New England days. Lucky if the old days 
were back; for then we of the pews might get more 
of the spirit and the clergy more of the flesh. The 
home circle certainly does need more irruptions of 
grace, both before and after meat. 

ON "THE PUSSY WILLOW" 

AYBE you have already seen children coming 
along the streets that lead homeward from 
the outlying brooks and ponds these March 
days, with arms full of pussy-willows, and 
you have felt suddenly tender again toward 
life and considerate of how steadily the calm 
world of Nature pursues her way, unvexed by all of 
the ant-like skurrying to and fro, of man and nations 
of men. Out of the past rise memories of yourself 
as a child searching for the first signs of the little furry 
catkins and eagerly bringing them home, to tempt 
again the old-time miracle of faith ; that if put where 
it was exactly warm enough — in the cuddly toe of a 
little shoe by the warm fireside — out of the night and 
all its wonders, might emerge, by way of the immacu- 
late conception of the pussy-willow, a dear little roly- 
poly kitten, with very bright eyes and a spiky little 
tail firmly standing erect, waiting there or else rolling 
over (kitten, tail and all) before the fire when you 
arose in the morning. Disappointment never raised 
a doubt. There was ever a reason and ever a failure. 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 107 

So we see, each recurring spring, the coming of 
the children, bearing the pussy-willow as a rite and 
religion of childhood, of the spirit of resurrection, in 
the very heart of the world. And the pussy-willow 
has a perfect right, of its own dear little self, to have 
a place of distinction in the episode. For it is first on 
the spot; first of all vegetation to feel the kiss of the 
lovely Sprite that tiptoes first to the brookside and 
along the oozy borders of the ponds. Here, screened 
from March gales and winter snows, in response to 
touch of spring, the pussy-willow puts off her brown 
winter coat and begins to glisten in the furry little coat 
that is so soft, warm and beautiful. And it is odd that 
where Spring first finds her way out, there she also 
departs, for, along the borders of the pond, the last 
glimpse of vegetation endures in autumn, as it shows 
first in the spring. 

Another thing that may interest us all about our 
little friend the pussy-willow, is that childhood, every- 
where, the world over, has the same love for it. There 
is not a place in the world where the willow does not 
grow in some form. It is along the equator, in the 
far-off polar regions as far as any vegetation what- 
ever endures of the tree-type, and with many uses, 
from material for weaving baskets and reeds to making 
charcoal and bringing great returns to some people 
who have raised the willow commercially. In olden 
days, it was used instead of the palm in the church 
festivals and appropriately as a symbol of the resur- 
rection, for it has strange powers latent within it. 
You can hardly kill a willow twig. Put it away and 
allow it nearly to dry and desiccate and yet put it 
into the earth and give it moisture and from the bare 



108 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

twig will set out roots and buds and it will struggle 
into fresh green again in the bravest and most reso- 
lute way. It has a singular reserve in leaf-buds. It 
keeps many of them against day of need. If fire 
sweeps in willow, or it becomes parched by drought 
and seemingly dies, the first touch of moisture will 
start out the reserve buds and again it is on its way 
as tho nothing had happened. You have seen the 
willow-tree cut off at its base and left in a condition 
that would discourage the ordinary tree; and yet, in 
a year or two, there it is again, all foliage, springing 
from the slender withes about the trunk. 

After the children have brought in the pussy- 
willow and the miracle of spring is on its way, the 
catkins become either silver or yellow. You find them 
swollen and fat. The golden ones are loaded with the 
stamens ; the silver with the pistils. And soon the bees 
are busy; flying from the silver to the gold, fertiliz- 
ing them with the pollen on their feet, while they get 
the first honey of the new year. And then, by and by, 
much later in the year, the willows are again shining 
in the golden light with long, waving burdens of the 
seeds that float away on land rivers and are so pro- 
lific that by nature's scheme if one in a billion lodges 
happily and grows, the balance of nature is preserved, 
so far as the pussy-willow tree is concerned. 

So — here it is again, the new March-time in the 
arms of childhood, coming down the street, the pussy- 
willow! Wonder what is within the furry coat! 
What mystery of life; what casket of the Lord God's 
own placing! "Who knoweth the balancings of the 
clouds and how thy garments are warm when He 
quieteth the earth by the south wind? Hath the rain 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 109 

a father and who hath begotten the drop of dew?" 
How little we know — less even than Job ! Little chil- 
dren know more than we — for they at least see 
miracles in the pussy-willow — while we often pass 
even the little children by and see no miracles, only 
Things. 

ON "CARVING ONE'S FIRST 
TURKEY" 

F COURSE no one expects ever to carve an- 
other turkey — the bird is extinct at the price ; 
but historically a disquisition on the subject 
may while away a moment of your time. 

Your job lay before you. Down the board 
gleamed a pile of white linen with waiting 
faces of children. It was your first attempt. The 
book told you how to do it; first take your fork; jab 
it into the breast; take the drumstick firmly in your 
hand; insert the knife in the second joint and give it 
a spry twist and lo ! the wing falls into the platter. 

Cross hands, fork in the right hand; knife in the 
left — carve off the white meat, gently dislocating the 
bird at all of its anatomical points of vulnerability, 
all of the time keeping up a running fire of brisk con- 
versation, telling the latest stories and congratulating 
the ladies upon their youth and beauty. 

This is the way the book tells you, but the way you 
do it is different. You grab the knife in your right 
hand at imminent danger of cutting the man's throat 
next to you. You pull up your sleeves, pull down 
your vest; draw a long breath and try to still the 




110 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

ominous throbbing in your ears. You make a jab at 
the bird with a fork and it slips off, and thru the mist 
of the declining year you hear the voice of your wife 
saying, "Perhaps, dear, if you took the fork instead 
of the steel it might go into the bird better." 

It is too bad that the age of a turkey is not writ- 
ten upon its breast in indelible ink or some other form 
of proper certificate. It is usually the oldest birds 
that lie in wait for the young Benedict's first Thanks- 
giving. If there is an antique in the turkey orchard 
about to die, he unquestionably selects his burial place 
in the family of the young man who is to entertain. 
'Tis thus that he gets his revenge. They do need such 
a lot of carving. They are such wear-resisters. They 
are so strong on the rush line and have such a strong 
secondary defence that it is almost impossible to make 
distance on them in anything like three downs. They 
are more apt to break thru the rush line and tackle 
you in the shirt front. 

It is strange how all of the old Thomas Turkeys 
fall to amateur carvers at holiday seasons. It must 
be because they are so fair to look upon and thus so 
easily deceive the amateur buyer who does not know 
that often beneath a rugged exterior in fowl there lies 
a tender heart. The age of turkeys and geese should 
be indelibly carved on their breasts. It is an anal- 
ogy. Tough things fall usually to the inexperienced. 
Every job that we tackle first in life is hard. Nobody 
ever went to work at a new job, without having the 
hardest bird to tackle, first day out. If you get your 
bird dislocated without landing him in the lap of the 
guest of honor and without having to get under the 
table to catch him as he goes around for the third 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 111 

time, you are lucky — the first carving. If you don't 
splash gravy on the dado and stuffing on the picture 
of "Home, Sweet Home," you are doing w^ell. If you 
don't give the neck to the rich relative and the v^^hite 
meat to the cook, you are playing in luck. If you 
don't upset the water-glass and spill the jelly, and 
knock over the bouquet, you are deft. If you don't 
swear, you are some Christian; and if you don't cry, 
you are some doughboy. If you don't come to with a 
string of sausages around your neck and dark meat in 
your whiskers, you are getting away with the job like 
some little carver. 

The thing, dear reader, is to have complacency 
and a sharp knife. I am never going to lose a chance 
to philosophize and draw my moral as well as my 
week's pay. Study your technique, in this 'world, and 
keep a sharp butcher-knife. If I couldn't have but 
one, I would have the knife. But you can have both. 
The world has as many joints as an old Tom Turkey — 
locate them and whet your scimitar. Then go for the 
old bird! Sometimes he is wonderfully tender, ready 
to fall into your platter. It is all according to what 
kind of a bird you draw. But most of us get old Toms. 
They callous the hand and sicken the heart. We 
sweat while others around the board joke and banter. 
We take the neck ; they get the choice bits. But always 
remember that you are carving; you are on the job; 
and that the day will come when you, too, will sit and 
wait while some other poor devil tackles his first Old 
Tom — the World, the Flesh and the Devil. 




ON "ABRAHAM AND LOT" 

ODERN instances are not altogether unique. 
Find me an ungrateful heir, a youngster who 
thinks that he knows more than his elders 
about everything on earth, and I will ask you 
to turn with me to Genesis and consider for 
a time the story of Abraham and Lot. 
Abraham (originally Abram, the "ham" being 
thrown in for good behavior), was a remarkable 
business man, a loyal and good man, a wonderful vis- 
ionist, a leader. He had a handsome wife, Sarah, but 
no children at the opening of this story. His wife was 
so good looking that she worried Abraham, for fear 
that Pharoah might take her away from him. Per- 
haps she was not so good-looking as Abraham thought ; 
for after Pharoah had looked her over, he told Abra- 
ham to take her along and not worry any more about 
her. Possibly Pharoah did not like blondes. 

Lot was Abraham's nephew and Abraham cher- 
ished him as a son, taking him when they all went up 
out of Egypt. Now, Lot was not, in my opinion, so 
much as he thought himself. In the first place he was 
the original High-Roller and what is worse, the alle- 
gorical equivalent of all human selfishness and ego- 
tism. He is introduced into Genesis, not alone for the 
historical perspective but also for the moral contrast 
between the uncommonly big Abraham, and the com- 
monly little Lot. 

As things progressed. Lot made a lot of trouble for 
Abraham. Abraham was a very rich man. He had 
cattle, gold, silver, power, command, the backing of 
Jehovah. He looked big to everyone except Lot. This 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 113 

is frequently the case in modern lives, as between big 
fathers and little sons. Property was regarded as di- 
vinely sacred in those days, as it always will be except 
by revolutionists and Marx Socialists — I say divine 
because it is said in the word of God to Adam, "In the 
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." Nothing 
is said about taking away by violence the bread that 
other men have won by thrift and toil. Everything 
Lot had, was from Abraham, and yet Lot considered 
Abraham old-fashioned, effete, non compos mentis, a 
punk business man, and not au courant with "effi- 
ciency." He and his men fought Abraham and his men 
until it was necessary that they separate. 

You have seen just such Jaspers as this in these 
days, — no gratitude; nothing but egotism and self-in- 
terest. Abraham saw through him but was patient. 
He said that if they must separate. Lot might choose 
the land, east or west side of the Jordan, as he chose 
and he, Abraham, would take what was left. Generous 
of Abraham ! I call it glorious ! How about Lot ? He 
took the best land — all of it, and left Abraham the 
barrens. 

Did this wind up Abraham and make Lot richer? 
Not so. Abraham kept right on, growing richer, and 
Lot kept on getting no richer a great deal faster. And 
why was this? The answer is simple — Abraham was 
thrifty and a worker ; and Lot was cultivating the habit 
of going out nights. Genesis says, "Lot pitched his 
tent over toward Sodom," and according to Genesis, 
Sodom was a bad burg. And then, too, mixed up with 
his red-light habits. Lot got into a League of Nations 
scrape where there were a lot of scrappy kings who 
fell on each other and Lot woke up to find himself a 



114 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

captive, with all of his wives and servants and cattle 
and sheep. Who came to his rescue? Nobody else ex- 
cept that old-fashioned fossil named Abraham, who 
went over with a crew of men, chased Lot's captors 
"unto Dan"; routed them; walloped the life out of 
them ; got Lot out ; restored all his property to him and 
would not take a cent for doing it. Some old has-been ! 
Eh! 

You might think that this would straighten out Lot ; 
but not at all, not at all! It wasn't any time until 
Jehovah was after Lot and this meant business. Je- 
hovah was sick of the red-light district of Sodom and 
he proposed to send a rain of fire and other incendiary 
bombs on the residential section of Sodom. And so 
the poor old has-wasser of an Abraham had to come 
over and get Lot out of trouble again. He did it by 
means of his own righteous life and his own leader- 
ship and his standing with God. And there is no 
finer picture in history than this forgiving nobleman 
of God, leading Lot and his fresh wife out of Sodom, 
the Man caring for the Dude, and the subsequently 
saline spouse. 

And yet there is no assurance that Lot ever appre- 
ciated Abraham. If he did, the Bible does not indicate 
when. Abraham is an immortal. Lot died after he 
took to drink and in incestuous manner founded the 
tribes of Moab and Ammon, that afterwards gave Je- 
hovah and Moses and Joshua so much trouble by their 
worship of strange gods. 

Thus is epitomized a type of young man which is 
still extant — who think that they are wiser than their 
fathers and who believe that "things have changed"; 
whereas there is no change and never will be any 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 115 

change in Duty, Loyalty, decent living and respect to 
elders, in gratitude and love. There never can be any 
day when it won't pay to be decent. 



ON "THE OLD BRICK OVEN" 

T NEVER was my job to build a fire in the old 

brick oven, though it had been the job for 

seme of the older boys; but there the oven 

8|^«|j yawned in the side of the kitchen, its one eye 

<g^ ^1 gleaming, often, in the twilight, like that of 

Polyphemus out of the cave, or rather, to my 

childish fancy, like the eye of the giant who chased 

Jack of the Bean-Stalk down his ladder of tendrils to 

safety and a happy life forever after. 

I think, although I cannot just say positively, that 
I have assisted in cutting the wood and building the 
fire in the old brick oven. The twigs that set off the 
crackling flame, I can just recall laying in, criss-cross, 
to start the blaze. It seemed to me like setting the 
house afire and that is what it was apt to do as we 
learned. The rear of the cavern of the old brick chim- 
ney extended into the kitchen cellar and stuck out like 
the back of a huge elephant, in the darkness, a reposi- 
tory for many things which are now forgotten and 
then were partially so. The old brick oven itelf, was a 
huge place of domed bricks, — the first form of fireless 
cooker. 

And so I can see the firelight gleaming through the 
dampers of the old brick oven, a dull red glow in the 
dimness of the old kitchen, and can hear the distant 
crackling of the cooling bricks as the heat passed off 
them into the spaces and into the viands that were 



116 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

cooking therein. It was like looking into another world 
of flame ; into the door of a furnace in a winter's night ; 
into the pathway of light from a door flung open to 
receive the guest. 

It was supposed — and there is no reason to doubt 
it — that things cooked in the old brick oven took on a 
different flavor. Beans and brown-bread from the old 
brick oven were cooked by slow process and by the sub- 
limation of their juices into a substance of which the 
delectability was never in doubt. I recall seeing the 
pots of beans come out, all rosy colored, and the beans 
tumble out like rubies, strung on links of juices clearer 
than platinum. I have seen apples, baked in the old 
brick oven, that would stand up all limpid and trans- 
lucent and so deep red as to look like balls of red yarn. 
I have seen brown bread come out all steaming brown 
and flavored with all the perfumes of the beans and 
apples and the fine grains of which they were made in 
those riotous days. It plainly was no fairy tale about 
the good things that came from the old brick oven. 

It was a comfort to have a brick oven in the kitchen 
in the winter time, for it was a sort of hot air furnace 
for most of the premises, and then, too, we always ate 
in the kitchen and it was fun to get "set" at the table 
and see mother pull out the beans. 

What a ceremony ! The long hook that was used to 
get them to the door of the oven ; the glow of the bricks ; 
the steaming of the pot; the odor of the unveiling — 
well, life was not so complex, in those days ; there were 
not so many fol-de-rols and less "service" ; but I do not 
recall that anyone starved. 

And it is certain to me that the old brick oven knit 
the home closer together. We get out of life what we 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 117 

see, what we fancy. The fire light playing on the 
hearth ; the eye of the old brick furnace winking in the 
twilight; the churn, dashing to and fro; the whirr of 
the old spinning wheel, as often as I have seen my 
grandmother sitting there in the afternoon spinning 
her yarn; the smell of lilacs; the meadow brook; the 
gentle sweep of the fields and pasture from the window 
by the old willow tree; the old open chamber with its 
faint, musty odor of dried apples and herbs hanging 
from the rafters; the old books and papers; the sing- 
ing of the frogs in springtime — these are the things 
that will endure. 

And in the last hours of most men and women it is 
these things that come back, making pictures; weav- 
ing fancies; recreating faces and forms long since 
gone. They re-people the old rooms ; make them again 
vocal with song and laughter of childhood's beloved 
and bring back the Easter of our lives, before yet the 
Easter of our souls has been accomplished. Perhaps 
it is the sublimation of these that, gathering like 
winged-bearers about our failing bodies, attend us in 
the passing; and bear us sweetly and gently out of 
mere memories into new realizations. 




ON "A LITTLE BUCK-UP STORY" 

BOUT thirty years ago, I ran across a little 
chap who came to this town to make a living. 
He was a Jew, named Jacob Goldman. He 
was one of that race of independent Jews who 
never work for any person except them- 
selves. He was a tiny fellow, with big dreamy 
eyes, a power of wit, a sense of indefatigable courage. 
I came across him in a newspaper way, by reason 
of a matter of police court, in which he was defending 
himself in a case of replevin of an old horse, of which 
he had become doubtful owner. He seemed to be in 
the right in the case ; his interests appealed to me and 
induced me to write about him somewhat romantically, 
with a touch of such pathos as I could summon. He got 
out of his trouble and I used to meet him in Fred 
White's tailor shop where he was a welcome visitor, in- 
duced by Mr. White's well-known fondness for odd 
characters. You always found them there, if any- 
where, in the old days. 

Jakie was a lover of a horse. This was also a bond 
of interest; for, if anything interested us, it was the 
"boss," as an element of taste. Jakie was an inveterate 
hoss-trader. And he was also very hard up. His 
effort, however, was never for himself but for grain 
enough to feed his horse. He always had a new one 
that ate more than the predecessor. He used to drive 
his latest acquisition up to the tailor shop and calling 
everyone out he v/ould say, "Isn't he a beau-u-uty, 
Mister Vite ! I tink maybe he eat less dan vat de odder 
vun eated." 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 119 

Jakie pursued the business of peddler. And he got 
on. Work! I wonder if the native-born American 
knows what work is by the side of the alien-born ! You 
never saw a foreign-born Jew, with a purpose to get 
ahead, who did any loafing to speak of unless to a pur- 
pose. They invariably dig away with heart and soul. 
They concentrate; and concentration is the secret of 
success. 

Little by little, Jakie got a better and a better horse 
and as they came along with fatter sides they were less 
nearly omniverous and more economical, doing more 
work on less grain, which is the habit of well-fed ani- 
mals — and people. He used to come up in this office 
and my news columns were full of the sayings of Jakie. 
I wrote sketches of him; idealized his struggles; saw 
in it the growth of alien peoples ; found in him texts for 
courage and comfort. 

Three or four years passed and Jakie had three 
horses, one of them threatened with speed. Then he 
took over a group of assistants and put them on the 
road. Then he bought a fine cart and went over the 
road like a gentleman. Then one day he got married. 
I went to the wedding — a fine affair with the prettiest 
black-eyed Rebekah for a wee, little wifie that I ever 
saw and a lot of friends from New York who had come 
over with him on the ship long before. He stayed 
around here a time after this — two or three years — 
and then one day he came in and said, "I am all sold 
owitt." New York for him and big business. He had 
a fine suit of clothes ; a decent, comfortable look in his 
face; a bright eye; a pretty wife; a black-eyed baby; 
a roll of cash in his pockets and a job in a wholesale 



120 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

clothing shop in New York, where he was bound to 
make good. 

I have never seen him since; but sowehow he has 
always epitomized for me the rewards of consistent and 
persistent effort on the part of a man who seemingly 
never had a chance in the world. Up against a lan- 
guage that he could hardly speak ; found in police court 
strapped and up against the law ; devoting himself to 
nothing but his own affairs with a commendable di- 
rectness that is sometimes spelled in terms of "mind- 
ing one's own business"; patient; always laughing; 
never downcast; always hunting an old horse with a 
view to turning a dollar; always saving his money; 
given to no bad habits — here was the symbol of the 
new bourgeoisie of the old world that depends not on 
revolutions for its success but on thrift ; diligence ; pa- 
tience and sticking to one job. 

I wish I could say that later in life I met him and 
found him a great and prosperous merchant. I can do 
nothing of the kind. I never saw or heard of him after 
he left this town. But I have never forgotten him and 
his example has had its effect on me in those depressed 
hours when inclined to ask "What's the use?" I have 
thought of Jakie Goldman and said to myself, "Buck 
up! Jakie Goldman did." And that's the "use" of 
Jakie Goldmans in this world. It isn't always the 
money or success they make, it's the pep they put into 
others by their example ! 




ON "NOAH" 

ERTAIN things that are happening today re- 
mind me of Noah, without whose foresight 
none of us would be here today. Noah's fore- 
sight, practiced today, in cities and in na- 
tions, would help solve many issues that other- 
wise may bring on the deluge. 
Noah was a noble character. To be sure he fell for 
the grape, once — but only once. Search history and 
apart from his experimental spree you will find no man 
who did a more complete and satisfactory job than 
Noah. He built the ark on pure faith. On the day 
when Noah hitched up and went out to go for gopher- 
wood to lay the keel of his ark, there was not a cloud 
in the oriental skies. Noah alone saw that there was 
going to be a spell of weather. Seeing it, he got ready. 
How many of you are emulating Noah ? How many of 
you see what is coming, in these cities, in this nation, 
for instance, unless you get ready? And are you be- 
having like Noah? 

Noah had his critics. They came down on the 
wharf while he was building the Ark ; sat around, whit- 
tled and chewed shavings of gopher — rags not having 
been invented. They laughed at the architecture of the 
Ark. They asked him what good Arks had ever done. 
They asked him how much the Lord was paying him 
as a commission. They asked him if a chap over in 
the town across the river hadn't built an ark that 
wouldn't work. They said they didn't believe in Arks. 
They said that taxes were very high and they could not 
afford Arks themselves and did not think that Noah 



122 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

was doing right in building an Ark at this inoppor- 
tune time. The "inopportunists" were so numerous 
that they sent a delegation down to advise Noah to wait 
until next summer before starting an Ark, for it looked 
to them like a drouth. Some of them said that if Noah 
built the Ark, the darned thing would most likely bring 
on a flood. Noah kept on building and then the critics 
said that Noah was a nut — just plain, plumb dotty. 
They said "we shall build no Arks ! We shall save our 
money and put it in the bank and brag about how much 
money we have out at interest. Noah is one of the im- 
practical dreamers. He simply does not understand 
conditions in this town. It never has rained over three 
days ; it never will. He is always thinking about sav- 
ing the human race. He better save money." And 
then they said the worst thing they could possibly say 
about Noah. They said, "He is an idealist." 

Noah launched the ark and a few months later he 
opened the door of the good old boat ; lit his pipe ; looked 
over the waste of waters and wondered what had be- 
come of his critics. And only the dove fluttered — ^nary 
a critic! 

This time and money spent by Noah for prepared- 
ness made it possible for you and me to be here today. 
A certain amount of work done for other people as well 
as ourselves will sometimes pay equal dividends. There 
are some people to whom $2 in taxes is bigger than $20 
for tobacco. They call "taxes" just plumb waste. A 
fire department runs up and puts out the fire on his 
roof and saves his home. Taxes support it but taxes 
are all waste just the same. In days of Rome, fire 
departments were run by private corporations and 
they would not save your house from burning unless 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 123 

you paid them a fee — just the same as you hire a 
plumber. 

We want a little injection of the blood of old Noah 
in our corporate system. We want to begin to see that 
what we do for others we do also for ourselves. It 
made me sick to see Auburn's city mass meeting turn 
down the one mill tax for a beginning of a park system, 
Monday evening. But what's the use — the old-fash- 
ioned chaps who see tax as a burden instead of an in- 
vestment, were in the majority. They were there chew- 
ing the good old gopher wood and hollering about taxes. 
A man who spends five dollars for a box of cigars, 
spends it for himself. Nobody else has a taste of it. 
It is his alone. The man who spends five dollars for a 
park and for civic improvement spends his five dollars 
for twenty thousand people, so that measured by actual 
accomplishment, he gets $100,000 for his money. If 
you can disprove that, I will give you the chance. 

Noah lived after some other people passed. He 
planted the vine and raised a family of whom we are 
the sole survivors. If Noah had not invested in the 
future; had not believed in civic welfare, we should 
not have been here. We would probably have been fish 
swimming around — some as sharks ; others as suckers. 
Noah happened to believe in preparedness and so he 
kept bone-dry in two ways. If Noah were here today, 
he would be planning for the time when discontent at 
unsocial conditions should mount into deluge. He 
would be doing his best to make conditions such that if 
it rained overlong, we might be friends and brothers 
well under cover. Believe me ! Arks cost money ; but 
they are good investments. Buy a slice in every likely- 
looking ark that is offered! The price of arks is go- 
ing up! 




ON "THE ELM TREE" 

^ T ITS best, it is when standing alone in a broad, 
green intervale, by the side of a meandering 
brook, its feathery fronds spouting up like a 
fountain and falling back in spray that fairly 
trickles down its columnar base. Set against 
a golden sunset, it has all the glory of pagan 
temples seen through stained glass windows. 

Odin, the vast triumphant god of Norse mythology, 
was walking by the sea one day with his brothers, Vile 
and Ve. A great storm had cast two tree trunks upon 
the beach, one an ash, the other an elm, and out of 
these they fashioned a man and a woman. Odin in- 
fused them with life and spirit; Vile gave them rea- 
son and the power of motion; Ve gave them vision, 
hearing and speech. The man was made of the ash; 
the woman of the elm. She was called Embla and, 
from these two, the whole human race descended. 
Maude Going says that this pagan mythology is cred- 
ible in art ; because there is something peculiarly fem- 
inine about the aspect of the elm, even to the feathery 
growths on the trunk below the mass of boughs, which 
Oliver Wendell Holmes compares to the soft, light locks 
about a woman's ear and brow. 

The elm is hardly an effeminate tree, nevertheless, 
and if womanly in its grace and if lovelier than any 
other tree in its straight trunk, its spouting, fountain- 
like foliage, its resiliency to the movement of the winds, 
its nicety of habit, its cleanliness and its glory of color, 
it is yet a mighty tree, strong, enduring, resolute and 
capable of solitudes. I love it for that — its capacity 
to dwell apart in spaces that it seemingly has sought 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 125 

for its prospect; its willingness to serve. There are 
six elms in one cluster in a dooryard of a Maine farm, 
all uniting into one profile against the sky. I go there 
very often to admire it. An elm (or better, three elms) 
in the dooryard of a New^ England home on a hill, is 
worth while. It bears up well against gales; not so 
sturdy as the evergreen it stands the storm better than 
most of the broad-leaved trees and quickly denuded in 
the autumn, stands through the winter with only thin 
antennae to rock to the passing winds. 

John Burroughs considers that our trees are not so 
sturdy looking as the trees of England ; "more nervous 
and agitated in expression, and he feels that the reason 
for the more massive repose of the English elm, oak 
and beech is that they have been longer out of the 
woods and have had plenty of time in which to develop 
individual traits and peculiarities and then, too, they 
have grown less in a hurry and have come to have the 
picturesqueness of age without its infirmity." But 
that is mere fancy, it seems to me! Trees stand out 
firmer against low hedges of flowers ; leaning over rose- 
embowered half-timbered cottages ; in parks where the 
vivid green of a lawn-like sward enhances the up- 
springing trunks. I still retain memories of velvet in- 
tervales with mighty elms, springing up and up and 
away and then falling in masses of swaying foliage al- 
most back to earth ! If you will find a lovelier message 
of God's own love of Beauty, for its own sake and for 
a message to us, groveling all too often here below, I 
ask you for it. It is the song that the singer gives from 
her heart, it is the dream that the artist paints or 
chisels; it is the hope that the saint expires with his 
prayer. 



126 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

The elm is a very faithful keeper of the tryst with 
Spring. "Rippling through the branches goes the sun- 
shine," says Lowell. "Among thy leaves that palpitate 
forever is the soul of the nymph of spring that is pris- 
oned there. The soul of a tremulous inland river 'quiv- 
ering to tell her woe, but ah ! dumb, dumb forever !' " 
It is very dear to us New Englanders, this keeping of 
the tryst with spring, and I hope you will watch its 
keeping, soon. There are at least two things you may 
see — first the little indistinctiveness that comes on the 
distant hillsides, sometimes very early in April, "as 
if a veil of gauze had been dropped before them." It 
is not the first film of summer green. It has color and 
yet has no color that one can name. It is the effect of 
the first swelling of the innumerable buds of all colors, 
purple, crimson, tawny, rarely green — the flower buds 
that breed little blossoms that float away while the 
foliage is still folded away in its casings. Of these 
the elm are lovely — larger than many others, swelling 
in the March sunshine, covered with pellucid scales that 
look, says one writer, "like tortoise shell." 

What a mother is nature! All winter these scales 
have kept the elm bud safe from frost and storm, sav- 
ing the sleeping life within the blossoms, and, their 
duty done, they fly away and spring is here and the 
great, radiant tree stands forth again and in solitude 
by the stream or along the city streets, stands guard of 
Beauty and symbol of aspiration and of purpose. In 
its branches are wonders enough of construction to fill 
a book in its telling ; its blossoms more nearly perfect, 
often, than the tulip; its nobility unstudied; its life, 
as of the ages, its shadow, the tryst of beast and bird. 
All guarded to the finest, tiniest leaf-bud by Nature. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 127 

And with the elm of the meadow enduring, are ye, O 
man, to be of little Faith! 

ON "HOW I TIRED OF FARMING" 




NE time a good many years ago we had an agri- 
cultural editor named Lyman Abbott. He 
was a good man, a kind man, a bee-culturist, 
an expert on apples, a poet, and he kept a 
very stuffy office on the sunny side of the old 
Journal Building looking out on the alley and 
on Lisbon Street. 

Mr. Abbott's office was full of odds and ends of agri- 
cultural wonders. Farmers came in with the longest 
sheaves of grain, which Mr. Abbott stood up in the 
corners or hung on hooks along the walls. They 
brought him enormous traces of corn which he sus- 
pended by the husks and left to collect the dust of ages. 
They brought him hives of bees to buzz away the dron- 
ing summer afternoons. They brought him patent con- 
traptions of wire and patent apple-pickers, never to 
see the light of day again. He had the true spirit of 
the man of the "littered desk" and he left things as 
they were, usually, the windows shut, the room close 
and smelling suggestively of the tenantry of the farm, 
heifer-like and rich with samples of fertilizer, smelling 
in the corners. 

I had been but a short time on my job and was 
prone to exploration. Mr. Abbott's room looked inter- 
esting — so long and narrow, running up to a sharp 
corner toward Lisbon street, and there filled with pa- 
pers and spring-tooth harrows and similar affairs 
which were too mysterious not to attract attention. 



128 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

I think it was the second or third week of my ad- 
vent into the Lewiston Journal family which was not 
then large. We used to get out a newspaper with two 
editors, one reporter, who was also city editor, sport- 
ing editor, society editor, city hall reporter, police re- 
porter, snake editor and religious editor combined in 
the person of yours truly. We had also two persons 
in the business office, no advertising solicitors, no news- 
boys selling papers on the streets, no circulation man- 
agers, no stenographers, no telephones, no electric 
lights, no electricity on the premises, no power but 
water and leg-power. 

We also had Mr. Abbott who loved bees and spring- 
tooth harrows and patent appliances for making farm- 
ing easy. And into his office I wandered one day in 
April, thirty-six years ago this month, to see what I 
could see. Often have I told this tale, as a warning 
against curiosity in children. It represents every ele- 
ment of the old, old story of Bluebeard's wives. I have 
written of the same thought in regard to "watching 
one's step" when poking into other people's affairs. 
The same sort of thing befell me when I fell into the 
soap barrel, of which I have informed you. 

On this day I passed the barricade of Uncle Ab- 
bott's desk over into terra incognita of his farming im- 
plements, to inspect a low, droning noise that was mak- 
ing good over by the sunny April window. As I stepped 
over, something unwound and sprang up my trousers 
legs and upset me together with a series of farming 
implements leaning up against the wall. There may 
have been also in the downfall an apple-picker or two, 
a green-bone grinder, an incubator, surely a roll of 
new-fangled wire fencing which had been sent by an 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 129 

advertiser. Many years have passed and I have no 
catalogue of the articles that came down. There were, 
I am positive, a trace or two of peculiarly dusty corn 
that enwreathed my brow ; much wire fencing that em- 
braced my form; the spring-tooth harrow that ran up 
and down my pants-leg, the fine, upstanding wreath of 
oats eleven feet tall — "tallest the editor had seen that 
season" — that stood over the place where the hero lay 
buried like a weeping willow over the tombstone of the 
dearly beloved ; and then down like an avalanche came 
all of Uncle Abbott's dried specimens of insidious 
beetles, potato bugs, dried and desiccated; and phyl- 
loxera of ancient days! All these sprinkled me with 
the balm of centuries. 

And then — I heard more low droning as I struggled 
with the wire and the spring-teeth and then ! O then ! 
the bees came forth! Now a bee is all right in his 
place : which is either in a hive or in a book. But when 
a person is tied hand and foot in the dust of ages; 
when bumble bees, drones and queen bees and lively 
young honey-makers are rioting with your system, ex- 
tracting huge junks and eating them and throwing 
away what they can't eat, it is no proper introduction 
for a young man to the life of a farmer. If a person 
ever had any disposition for life on the farm, to be 
buried under the files of the agricultural editor and all 
the rest of his museum, while a hive of bees is per- 
forating your union suit and making merry with your 
life blood, is surely discouraging, as I can testify. 

When the editor, and all of the ladies, especially the 
ladies, rescued me, I was no longer even remotely in- 
terested in agriculture and never have been since, while 






130 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

I will run farther and faster away from a spring-tooth 
harrow than I will from a boa-constrictor — when I see 
him. 



ON "THE SMELL OF A BRUSH FIRE" 

EARLY everyone likes the smell of a bon- 
fire. You can recall when you leaped forth, 
five feet at a leap, with whoops at each land- 
ing, after supper of some April evening, to 
follow the smell of a distant brush fire. The 
odor seemed to put pep in your legs. You 
gamboled like a young kid on the hills of the psalmist. 
Often when you found it, there was nothing but a 
pillar of smoke from a back-yard rubbish heap, but 
none the less would you stay and watch its slow spirals 
to the evening sky. It fitted your mood. It soothed 
the perturbed, longing spirit of the boy, in you. If the 
man would let you rake a bit and pile on more stuff 
to make the smudge and you could afterward stand in 
the smoke, you were happy. And later, you crawled 
in between the sweet sheets of home smelling like a 
dump heap, but satisfied. 

But if you could find a real bonfire, what exhilara- 
tion ! To see it from afar lighting up the evening sky 
and the surrounding barns and houses ; to come nearer 
and see the sparks flying up and roll over crackling in 
the night; to catch the shadows of the dancing chil- 
dren as you speeded up the streets and through the 
back-lots ; to see the curls of the girls floating out be- 
hind them as they ran about; to smell the ineffable 
odors of the spruce, pine, fir and hemlock, mingled in 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 131 

ecstasy of perfume on the altars of the vernal gods — 
this was the apotheosis of joy. 

And it was not without its larger recompense; po- 
tatoes baked in the ashes raked out with a crotched 
stick and eaten raw and hot, with hard hearts and 
mealy outsides — just like some people whom we have 
come to know later ; potatoes with burnt skins and un- 
savory appearance, mealy all through, like some other 
people whom we have also known. The leaping through 
the flames with daring that made the small girls ap- 
pear transfixed with admiration and terror, the bring- 
ing of fresh boughs to hear the roar of the flames as 
they bite into the pitch of the flr and hemlock, and 
finally the dying down of the fire into red coals with 
groups of boys standing around silently and thought- 
fully in the sweet April night. 

You know of Meleager. He was a sort of mytho- 
logical chap whose life was to be measured by a brand 
laid upon the fire. I think of him often as I watch the 
fire on the hearth, for Meleager was born to trouble 
with the Fates who told his mother, Althaea, when the 
infant was seven days old that he should live until the 
brand on the fire was consumed. The mother plucked 
the brand from the burning and hid it in her bosom. 
All this is told in the Ode of Bacchylides, how in the 
wasting warfare of the times, Meleager killed his 
brothers when Althaea in anger laid the brand from 
her bosom on the fire once again and watched it calmly 
as poor Meleager went up in smoke with the burning 
brand. We boys did not know about that; but some- 
thing about the moods of those after hours around the 
red coals of the brush fires, must have touched us with 
the passing of life. At any rate it was something more 



132 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

than the mere worship of fire, which is innate in most 
of us. How many Meleagers went up in the bonfires ! 
What a complex chemical reaction had been set up, we 
did not know ; but we did know that here was mystery. 
Something struck the deeper being of the boy ! He felt 
his wings beating against the bars of life. It had its 
voice for him; for fire is not mute. It has a distinct 
speech; it roars in the bonfire, a sort of eager chant 
just suited to a boy, who likes to shout to the four 
winds of heaven. The fire on the hearth is sedate, like 
age, respectful and considerate, driving its wedges into 
the wood and peeling off the bark like the blue flame 
of the blowpipe. The fire in the grass goes like a snake 
stealthily hissing along. The fire in the furnace seeps 
through in silence or else with no more noise than the 
lapping of waves of milk on a shore of cotton-wool. 
But the bonfire shouts like a boy and leaps like a boy 
and rollicks like a boy and is soon worn out like a boy. 
It must have taken its name from boy-fire, which is 
not far from bonfire. 

Bonfires are good for boys. I would have the legis- 
lature provide a fund for bonfires. It will improve 
their morale ; develop their thought ; warm their spir- 
itual as well as physical natures. Flame purifies, even 
the soul, which is accounted as nothing but Prome- 
thean heat. 

All this from smelling a distant odor of a brush fire 
the other night built of leaves, a piece of burlap and a 
few sprigs of hemlock. When there is to be a real bon- 
fire will some good friend notify me? 




ON "GHOSTS AND SUCH" 

AM well acquainted with ghosts — I almost said 
spirits. When I was a boy, we had ghosts 
hanging around daily, hourly, every evening, 
in summer. I never saw one, but they were 
there and we enjoyed them, I had as soon 
see a ghost as hear the Lowell-Lodge debate 
in Boston which was the most tiresome thing I ever 
heard. Our ghosts were happy, fun-making shades, 
table-tipping, spirit-rapping, cutting up high jinks 
everywhere. 

My grandfather had a boy on his farm whom he 
took in as an orphan from the unkindly hands of the 
selectmen of the town and whom he brought up as his 
own boy. The lad had never been out of the country 
village. He was powerfully strong in body and pecu- 
liar in mind. He had an effeminate voice and strange 
receptivities. 

One day, with no incentive that we could discover, 
he took to having "spirit manifestations;" table tip- 
pings, spirit rappings, spirit writings — all the wonders 
of the "medium." It was a lonely country home, so we 
had nothing else to do, in the soft summer twilights, 
when ghosts could walk without getting a cold, but seek 
to penetrate the veil that separates this world from the 
next. You would not believe me if I should tell you all 
of the strange things that befell us young people. The 
boy was about sixteen; I was about fourteen; there 
was a girl cousin about seventeen ; my grandfather of 
about seventy and grandmother approximately of the 
same age — both the latter supremely indifferent to the 
whole affair and often not approving. Then, too, there 



134 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

was an uncle and an aunt and sometimes another uncle ; 
but the chief of it all was this boy, whom we called 
Albert. There you are ! A country boy, who had never 
been where he could have learned guile or trickery; 
who seemed to be wholly unconscious of what was go- 
ing on ; who did things that seemed to suggest the oc- 
cult, mystic, unreal, in this workaday world. 

It is said to have happened one evening by accident. 
This boy said, "I believe I can call up spirits." So they 
sat around a table in mediumistic fashion and sum- 
moned them. "If there are any spirits present they 
will please rap," was the formula. And they rapped. 
Nobody knew which one was responsible for their re- 
sponse, for all hands were on the table, but it was not 
long before it became evident that the receptive person 
was Albert. He became very famous throughout the 
countryside after some years and he did all sorts of 
strange things "assisted by the spirits," that no one else 
could do. I fancy that after a time, he mixed up trick- 
ery with his gifts ; but he knew no trickery in the old 
days of which I am speaking. I have sat, far into the 
night, two or three around a table, and talked by spirit- 
rapping with what we esteemed to be the departed ; and 
yet, it never gave me any qualms or unsettled any re- 
ligious faith I ever had or was looked on as anything 
but a sort of game. We had special spirits that came- — 
Captain Kidd, who would lead us on in our search for 
his gold until we got right down to brass tacks and 
then he would tell us to hie hence to a profane region. 
In fact, there never seemed to be any real information 
in any of it. Yet we had many inexplicable things — 
which I have not time or space to relate. But here is 
something that I can testify to — both together, in the 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 135 

old open chamber of a hot summer night, — I held Al- 
bert's hands and he summoned the spirits, unwillingly, 
for the effort always made him wakeful. They came 
and rapped on the head-board, on the water jug and 
the walls, — rude, heavy, stout rapping, as loud almost 
as hammer strokes, thumping, and finally one good 
stout crack on my forehead. "Drat it!" said Albert, 
as he got another on his own head, "The fools !" 

Yes ! as I said before, I have met ghosts. They are 
not so bad. We tried one evening to get the spirits to 
blow a wail on an old yellow clarinet that sat upright 
on the little hanging wall-bookcase. Now — I don't take 
oath to this; but I will swear that I believe that we 
heard the faint, low-drawn wail of a ghostly breath 
through the old, old clarinet, once played by lips long 
since dead. I say I won't swear that we heard it ; I will 
swear that we all said we did. Something happened. 
We were terribly wrought upon; we stopped the fun 
for the evening. I can recall it after forty years. I 
HEARD something. I was too nervous to tell what. 

Albert lifted tables with one finger ; he could put his 
little finger on a table and three men could not lift it ; 
it would tear apart before one could wrench it from 
the floor. How did he do it? I don't know; don't care 
much. I only know that he was a crude country lad 
who did not know what he was doing. Do you ? 




ON "CHURCH DINNERS" 

HE church dinner is not so common a theme 
as it once was, because butter is not so plen- 
tiful and eggs are high and because people 
are keeping closer run of the household ex- 
i pense accounts than they used to do. I have 
always held that, in the old days when the 
housewife carried to the church, dinner for the family 
and then everyone paid for the eating thereof, it was 
uneconomic; because it would have been less trouble 
to have carried the money to church than to have car- 
ried the food. 

The best church dinner that I ever went to was just 
out of Bowdoinham village along in 1879 — there, or 
thereabout. It was a lovely winter night and we went 
over on runners, boys and girls all tucked in pung half 
full of warm, loose straw that tickled your feet. One 
of the features (I will not say eatures) of the church 
supper, was an enormous chicken pie. It was the big- 
gest chicken pie that I ever saw, baked in a great iron 
pot, almost three feet across and placed in the center 
of the table under a hanging lamp with streamers of 
tissue paper festooning from the lamp to the handles 
of the pot and to its bale. It was lovely. 

There was an unusually pretty girl there at the din- 
ner named Curtis. I hardly know why I should re- 
member her name — for I fancy that she would not 
remember mine — if so and she is yet in the flesh and 
sees this, I shall be pleased to hear from her in refer- 
ence to the matter. The parson of the church — it was 
Methodist — was an excellent occasional preacher in the 
district who had come over for the festivities. We were 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 137 

to pay twenty-five cents each for the dinner and draw 
a girl by means of colored ribbons. I drew the fair 
maid. And that's the end of that. 

The minister came in very rosy from the outdoor 
with his boots covered with snow. He had been romp- 
ing outside with some of the sisters and elders of the 
church — in a democratic and fearless illustration of in- 
nocent fun. He approached the pie to carve it; slipped 
and plunged his hand full into the pie up to his elbow. 
It was hot and as he flung up his hand he caught the 
festoons and nobody ever could understand just what 
did happen. He seemed to slip again on his off foot and 
lunge again and then sort of sink into the middle 
of the table and go down in a general collapse of pie 
and parson. 

I wrote this story in the Lewiston Journal of Dec. 
13th, 1902, sixteen years ago when it was sixteen years 
fresher in my memory, but when I was more inclined 
to exaggeration than now. I quote from that account 
that the parson "plunged his whiskers into the pie ; the 
table busted from end to end and the minister's whis- 
kers flowed out over the edges of the pie like smoke 
through the crack of a door." I also said that "I no- 
ticed the soles of the parson's boots as they disappeared 
and that the pickles danced with glee about his pie- 
besmeared face. * * * The picture of the valiant 
preacher with a wishbone hanging on each ear and a 
section of pie crust stuck to his bald spot like a mortar- 
board on the head of a college senior was worth re- 
membering for all one's life." The parson's whiskers 
were fine long Burnsides — common in those days — and 
they retained gravy with perfect success. The poor 
man! They dug him from the debris with care and 



138 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

love and bore him tenderly to a near-by settee. He 
was the finest chicken salad I ever saw. Years have 
passed and I never see a chicken pie without happy 
memories. It has not improved my appetite for chicken 
pie for I never really cared for them — but it has en- 
larged my capacity to enjoy church suppers. I am al- 
ways hoping that some other minister or elder will fall 
into one just by way of entertainment. I used to say 
that if we could advertise that the minister would 
wrastle with a chicken pie at eight o'clock, promptly, 
the vestry of no church in the country would hold the 
attendance. 

The church dinner has not wholly passed; but it 
is passing as a form of raising church debts. It has 
turned out that community eating is not an economical 
form of Hooverizing. Any man will eat five times as 
much food if it is placed before him and he has to 
spear it across the table quickly, deftly, eagerly before 
his neighbor can launch his uplifted fork, than he will 
at home where the only indoor sport he has is growl- 
ing about the quality of the cooking. Church suppers 
are like Chamber of Commerce Banquets, the place 
where the private citizen becomes a public burden. I 
am ordinarily, I hope, a sacrificial party, and willing 
to give the white meat to the children and take the 
piece-that-went-over-the-fence-last for myself, and yet 
I will gloat over the celery hearts, grab all that I can 
get and eat for fear that someone else will get it. 

Here permit me to stop and leave the philosophy to 
you. Is it not like nations sitting around the peace 
table ? Are we not in danger of overreaching and fall- 
ing into the pie? 



ON "THE CROWS IN THE SKY" 




HEARD the crows going over this morning, 
before my head was off the pillow. It sounded 
high up in the sky, Hke a clock striking the 
hour to mark the passing of winter and the 
coming of another year. We do not know 
when winter goes and spring comes in; but 
the voice of the crow heard thus distantly flying over 
early in the morning of early March is as good a start- 
ing point as any. When you hear his resolutely bel- 
ligerent, yet ever cheerful voice, you know that the 
willow is putting out its furry little epaulets ; that the 
honey bee is stirring himself and that down at the 
million, trillion grass roots, things are waking. 

Sure enough, as I came to work this day also, I no- 
ticed that Neighbor Prescott's crocuses were putting 
up little pink ivory, lance-like heads along the wall of 
his house and that other neighbors were moving out 
ashes and slicking up lawns; for we who live in town 
have not so many signs of spring to seek as those who 
go afield more often. I have no special skill in adven- 
turing in the fields and woods. I never was taught to 
study birds and flowers and to me one herb is like an- 
other. For this reason, tho my eyes dim at the vision 
of a landscape and my heart rejoices until I really feel 
like going on my knees in worship in the deep woods, 
I have no authority to write like the naturalist or the 
scholar of the woods. 

I wonder if the naturalist has any advantage over 
one of those who, burdened by no scientific formulae 
and carrying no nomenclature, write things out of their 



140 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

hearts as to how nature touches them. John Bur- 
roughs, for instance, has no patience with those who 
go in the fields and string pretty phrases about them 
and add nothing to the sum total of human knowledge 
about life therein. Mr. Burroughs never says unkind 
things; for such is not his nature; but with all his 
poetry he is one of those who favor plain facts, sim- 
plicity of statement and no ad-captandum stuff. And 
any man who writes as though he had an audience is 
not on his good books. But Mr. Burroughs is a great 
word alchemist, nevertheless. If he has no conception 
of his audience how does he so delight us? And so — 
to each writer his own thought! If a man's intimate 
knowledge of the woodchuck and the honey bee be 
vague, may he not find in the general coucourse of na- 
ture something that is worth talking about — even if it 
be only a bare pasture or a day on a hilltop or a walk 
down a country road, just by way of exhortation to 
others ? 

Last summer at Squirrel Island, I talked with John 
Burroughs about this matter. And he said it was ac- 
cording to what one did with his material. It is in his 
preface to Wake Robin — one of his very first books — 
that he puts down his notion, as he said it to me. You 
may find it in his beautiful simile about the honey bee 
and the author. He said that the honey bee does not 
gather honey from the flower. There is no honey in 
the flower. The bee gets sweetened water and flavor. 
The bee transmutes it into honey, by the art that is his. 
To it he adds the touch of formic acid that gives it 
piquancy, and we taste that and the thyme and the 
violet and the honeysuckle and the clover. The writer 
does the same. He goes abroad and comes home laden. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 141 

His art transmutes it into literature — at least the art 
of John Burroughs does. 

It becomes a question, therefore, if any person not 
learned as Gilbert White, or John Burroughs, or Henry 
Thoreau, has any right to talk about mysteries that he 
does not understand. But the question does not pre- 
clude one from enjoying them and pondering over Na- 
ture and wondering what is man and what is his des- 
tiny. It does not deter one from going reverently 
under the great trees, in what Thoreau called "Mr. 
Spalding's woods" and asking himself if there is any 
closer proximity to God in the going. I do not believe 
that Mr. Burroughs got his religion out of the Latin 
name of the hedgehog or the nomenclature of the Wake- 
Robin. He never got this noble creed out of dissecting 
the Calamus. "I have no doubt," says John Burroughs, 
"that the life of man on this planet will end. But the 
potential man will continue on other spheres. * * * 
The universe is all of a piece so far as its material 
constituents are concerned ; that we all know. Are not 
the planets all of one family, sitting around a central 
source of warmth and life? Worlds are only red cor- 
puscles in the arteries of the infinite. If man has not 
yet appeared on other planets, he will in time appear 
there. I do not say that he is the end and aim of cre- 
ation ; it would be logical to expect a still higher form. 
Man has been here but little more than one hour of the 
vast geologic day. Less than another geologic day like 
that which has passed and no doubt all life from the 
earth will be gone. What then? The game will be 
played over again in other worlds, without approaching 
any nearer the end than now. There is no final end as 



142 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

there was no beginning and can be none with the in- 
finite." This is not at all what I started out to say 
when interrupted this morning by the crows in the 
high skies, but it has a meaning to me if to no one else. 

ON "DRIVING HOME THE COW" 




KNOW a man who, at the age of forty-five 
years, emancipated by a prosperous business 
from the necessity of performing such serv- 
ice, yet goes every night in summer to a pas- 
ture, over a mile away, to drive home the cow. 
He says that as the hour comes and the shad- 
ows lengthen, something calls to him out of his boy- 
hood and sends him to this pastoral pursuit. 

I have known other odd forms of pleasure, but none 
more sensible. To drive the cow, one must walk; and 
to walk, one must belong to the Order of Walkers, of 
which John Burroughs says: "All the shining angels 
second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while 
all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance 
to ride. * * * a race that neglects or despises the 
primitive gift of walking ; that fears to touch the soil ; 
that has no footpaths, no community of ownership in 
the land, which they imply ; that warns off the walker 
as a trespasser; that knows no way but the highway, 
the carriage way ; that forgets the stile, the foot-bridge, 
that even ignores the right of the pedestrian in the 
public road, providing no escape for him but in the 
ditch or up the bank, is in a fair way to more serious 
degeneracy." 

So — my friend must perforce walk, through all 
weathers, for his cow; for a cow would be insulted, if 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 143 

personally conducted by what Mr. Burroughs calls "a 
dark spirit," in an automobile evilly smelling up the 
fragrant highways, or by a person carrying an um- 
brella. I have heard of an untutored man going after 
his cow on a rainy day, with rope and umberell. Each 
was a blunder in bovine ethics. The cow stood for the 
rope over her horns, because of contrition ; but because 
of conventions, would not stand for the umbrella ; and 
when the man regained consciousness, the cow was 
half a mile nearer home and the man was sitting in 
the ditch, cautiously retracting his ears from between 
the ribs of the umbrella. 

You must go for the cow, au naturel. The cow asks 
for simplicity. All she seems to require anyway is your 
society. She perfectly well knows the way home and 
the duty that calls her. All she asks is the deference 
implied by your waiting upon her each close of the day 
with a special invitation to make your house her home ; 
and if she had her way, she would prefer that the 
invitation be extended to her by a barefoot, shock- 
haired, red-headed boy, wearing shirt and trousers 
only, held up by a pair of wide braces, crossed in the 
back. 

I fancy that most of us who have driven cows, re- 
call the etiquette at the bars and are sure that cows are 
"driven" best, when they are not driven at all. Of 
course there are cows — and cows. Some were always 
waiting at the bars; others had to be garnered from 
distant browsings and urged to the exit, with exple- 
tives and sour apples, used as missiles. Cows have dis- 
positions — I recognize that. I once knew a man who 
had a nervous cow and who himself was fractious. In 



144 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

this cow's tie-up could be found broken pitch-fork han- 
dles, clubs and other indications of chastisement as well 
as rude welts on the cow's hard old rump. "I don't 
suppose," said the man, "that anyone else but me could 
get along with that cow." But, as a rule, it is with 
cows as with people, they drive best when not driven. 
We boys should have learned — possibly we did learn — 
patience and tolerance, by driving cows. The low voice, 
the gentle hand, not to vex the cow ; and then the spirit 
of tolerance for the limitations of the cow — as with 
folks. And this was enough philosophy, if learned, to 
pay rich dividends on the labor. 

It was a shame that they did not know in those old- 
time schools, where there were boys who drove cows, 
what a fine occupation it was; through what a world 
of wonders it led ; under what skies ; over what a car- 
pet; with what companions of Nature, so that the 
schoolmaster could have told us about it. And yet we 
old-fashioned boys did sense its beauty and incorporate 
into our fibre some of the undying life of the Open. 
There was always Adventure ; often much boyish spec- 
ulation at what the world might be; frequently very 
deep cogitation over what my father used to call "the 
so-ness of the as-it-were." 

Modern boys lose this. They know nothing of the 
exhilaration that Walt Whitman indicated when he 
said, "Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road." 
They have no tinkling memories of distant cow-bells, 
each speaking its own old-home note to each boy, as 
surely as he knew the low of his own cow. They can- 
not see the leafy lanes ; hear the high-hole, the pee-wee, 
the bluebird; wade again, in memory, the loitering 
brook, to lave the stone-bruised foot, the prehensile 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 145 

foot of boyhood, bare, brown, tough against the road; 
riot through the orchards for "sopsy-vines" or "Au- 
gust sweetings ;" chase the woodchuck with old "Bose," 
the good old cur-dog who always went along gamboling 
and sniffing over miles about ; kill snakes ; hunt sassa- 
fras root, and finally, get the cow, standing there quite 
evidently recognizing you and (as it seemed) happy 
that she was to be driven by her own boy who under- 
stood the fun of driving cows. 

< Yes, cows are like folks. They like to be led, if at 
all, by happy companions, not by dudes with umbrellas 
or demagogs with pitchforks. They like, also, the path 
to be sunny, tuneful, fragrant; the weather, as it hap- 
pens ; the way — Homeward. 



ON "LAST DAYS OF SCHOOL" 

HERE was a peculiar exhilaration about old- 
time "last days of school," with their cere- 
mony and oratory. I can't recall just what 
exhilarated me personally, but somehow it 
seems, in a remote way, to be associated with 
my feet. I reckon, therefore, that it was 
due to the fact that we wore our shoes on such occa- 
sions and that these pressed on our erstwhile unre- 
strained toes of June and drove the blood to our heads 
and thereby exhilarated us. 

No boy ever wore shoes, in my time, from May 
to "last day," and on the other hand, no boy went 
barefoot when he "spoke" on exhibition day if he had 
any shoes. I don't know why, but I suppose that it 
was not artistic for a boy to get up and yell "Ye c-c-call 




146 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

m-m-m-e chief! And ye d-d-d-o well to c-c-call him 
ch-ch-ch-ief who f-f-or tw-tw-twelve long y-y-years," 
etc. Somehow, Spartacus was supposed to have 
shoes — I don't know why — but we thought that he 
might have had 'em because he was a "chief"; and 
probably we were correct about it. Certainly Spar- 
tacus never did appear in the forum with a rag round 
his big toe. Of course, we did not always have the 
shoes — just kip boots in winter and au naturel sum- 
mers; so that many of us had to Sparta-cuss in our 
bare feet. And now that I think of it, I am not aware 
that it excited any special comment or disapproval. 
Society did not seem to be shocked. It was a simpler 
era of life, anyway, and one person was about as good 
as another so far as dress went. Occasionally we 
dressed up a little by washing our feet, or putting on 
a necktie under the paper collar, and that ended it. 

About everyone in town went to the last day of 
school, except a few fathers, who were tied down to 
the trades. Farmers and their wives could generally 
get away, especially as it came between hay and 
grass. The schoolhouse would be hot, stuffy and 
bringing in the mingled suggestions of domestic life 
and rural pursuits. The Committeemen were also 
there and the "Supervisor" and the First See-lect- 
man. It was a gathering of the fashion of the com- 
munity — and relatively just as impressive as any other 
fashion, anywhere. Fashion is only a matter of 
contest. 

In this respect, there came a day once, a "last day 
of school" when there seemed to be a feeling of "jazz" 
in the air and the word went forth that we were to 
dress up. It came at an inopportune time for me, as 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 147 

my wardrobe had not as yet come from the tailor's — 
neither my usual brown linen summer suit nor shoes 
of any description, as yet. But — the girls were going 
to dress and the boys were going to do their darnedest. 
It left me rather marooned, as I was to be an orator 
of the occasion; and I don't mind saying that I was 
"boy-Roscius" — able to holler "My name is Norval on 
the Grampian Hills" as loud as any other. No exhi- 
bition was complete without me. 

It is a singular commentary on changed conditions 
of life, that it was a matter of seeming indifference 
to the parents of those days as to how their children 
looked. They were kind and loving, tender and sweet 
parents, but it did not especially concern them what 
we wore to "Last Day." If you "spoke up real loud," 
you were all right. There was no competition in 
shoes, so far as I can recall. We all, as a rule, shifted 
for ourselves. I went up attic and found a little blue 
coat with frogs for buttonholes and slashes up the 
sides, faced with rather worn silk — brilliant and once 
beautiful, to my eyes. I have no memory or knowl- 
edge of how it came into our family ; we had no royalty 
among our relations. 

I tried it on and while it did not go well with my 
little baggy trousers with a triple layer of patches on 
the seat and a call for a fourth, showing the imminent 
shirt-tail, I wore it. When I burst on the audience 
with that and "Arnold Winkelried! Make way for 
Libutty, he cried. Made way for libutty and died." 
Why, man ! you could hear the gasp of surprise, the 
flutter of tense appreciation; the plaudits of childish 
wonder ; the rustle of the farmer's foot. My eyes dim 
a bit as I wonder what sort of a child I must have 



148 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

appeared, in that funny little coat and those weary 
pants, speaking for liberty. But perhaps I was in 
fitter costume than some children of today, bound to 
fashion and to set form. Perhaps those little bare 
toes did speak a part of the appeal, after all. Per- 
haps the imminence of the shirt spoke for the freedom 
of the sees. Perhaps the common level of wonder left 
larger room for the freedom of the soul. 



ON "OLD MAIDS" 

HAVE not seen an "old maid" for years. I 
don't think there are any nowadays. They 
used to be institutions, in old New England; 
the village "old maid," making buttonholes 
and doing plain sewing. God bless her for 
her usefulness. 
So today I never hear the word "old maid." No 
one now believes that any woman who wanted to get 
married couldn't find some man to marry. When it is 
a reproach for green apples to ripen, for buds to blos- 
som and May to become September, then it is a re- 
proach for a girl to grow old. But because she didn't 
happen to want to marry without love, or to pick out 
some duffer to do cooking, washing and ironing for, at 
nothing per week and nothing found, it's no occasion 
for epithets. I reckon there are more old "fools" 
among married women than old maids among unmar- 
ried women and as many wives who would be old maids 
if they could, as there are old maids who would be 
wives if they had the chance. 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 149 

No, indeed ! The day has gone when any mere mar- 
ried woman can join in the jest and sneer at the "old 
maid." It isn't done any more. And don't mistake 
me ! I am not discussing marriage but simply discuss- 
ing the "disgrace" of not being married, which used 
to hang like a blight over old New England and force 
many a fair maid to marry the first chap whom she 
could "catch," be he a boor, a clown, a beast, a miser, 
a tyrant or a clod. 

It is no longer a disgrace not to be married because 
woman has found out that she can very nicely get along 
unless she happens to fall in love. Then it's all over ! 
If she falls in love good-bye to the Aunt Mary ! Good- 
bye to the Aunt Tabby of forty years hence. She will 
marry and if all goes well she will be happier than 
ever she could be as an unmarried woman. But if 
not, if she does not choose to enter into a contract to 
sew on buttons for a man for whom she does not care 
a rap, then she emerges from the music-haunted woods 
of youth into the companionless sweep of middle life 
as what? 

I will tell you. She is either a capable worker or 
a universal mother and general regulator in her mar- 
ried sisters' household — one of the two, nine times out 
of ten. If little Johnny is sick "Aunt Mary" tends 
him. If sister's baby dies. Aunt Mary folds the little 
wax-like hands and drops the last tear over the quiet 
baby face. If the girls in the household are married, 
Aunt Mary gives the final pat to the bride's fixings and 
is the mother's rival in the bride's fond love. She 
merges her identity in the love and the life of others 
and finding her religion in doing her duty in the daily 
round, is something of a saint, and a universal mother, 
as I have said. 



150 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

I can also see so many of these high-headed, cap- 
able, independent, reliable unmarried business women 
around me that I wonder sometimes how much the 
world has been set back, by the marriage ordinance. 
I see one who is earning an independent livelihood and 
earning enough if she cared to do it to permit her to 
marry some failure of a man who should sew on HER 
buttons and do HER cooking. And I doubt not there 
are some men who would like the job. I knew an "old 
maid" who earned the modest salary of $15,000 a year 
and who dressed like a princess and lived like an 
ascetic. I never, somehow, thought of her as being an 
"old maid." I read, too, now and then, of married 
women with the happiest of domestic relations also 
earning their independent incomes by their writing or 
their art. And I am determined in my reason, that it 
is a matter of "love," not a matter of "getting married" 
to some one no matter if he isn't worth much. 

So — "old maid" is no longer opprobrious as a term. 
It merely signifies today a choice on the part of the 
woman and not the man. And usually it sanctifies 
women of this sort. The "Aunt Mary" who lives with 
her married sister and loves her nephews and nieces 
and is loved by them, is generally just about fit for 
heaven from the moment of her ultimate decision. God 
is no respecter of persons. "They who know MY will 
and do it," will shine over yonder just the same. By 
their deeds, their service, shall they be known. And 
so I take off my hat to these business women, married 
and unmarried, wives, widows and "old maids" who no 
longer are driven by the old-fashioned fetich, that a 
woman not married is a woman shamed, but who do as 
love impels them and thereby fulfil the ordinances of 
the "greatest thing in the world." 




ON "CAMP-FIRES" 

E COME at dusk to the camping place and it 
lies, as happens in this instance, on the bank 
of a mountain stream, full in the sun of a hot 
August day. The grasses are white with heat 
and dead past recall. The plateau is level and 
inviting. The westering sun casts its shad- 
ows on the place through clumps of mountain ash 
whose red berries will come a little later, no doubt — a 
fact which I mention for your own delectation. The 
laboring teams with their loads of baggage and food 
come to a halt after many hours of toiling over moun- 
tain-sides, through brooks that bawl along without 
ceasing, and over streams which the horses forded 
belly-deep. We turn the horses loose amid the grass. 
We pitch the tent. We find the old fireplace left, years 
agone, by the river-drivers. We throw ourselves on 
the warm earth and burn incense to the dying day. We 
are in camp. 

I do not know but what there are joys greater than 
coming into camp after a toilsome day ; but I have ex- 
perienced none. The fire is lit; the bedding is rolled 
out into the sunlight ; the tent is raised and the brook 
is sought for the water for man and beast. "Who hath 
smelled the smoke of the wood fire at twilight?" or 
words to that effect. Who hath watched the water boil 
in the pail and the tea steep in the pot? Who hath 
seen the horses roll in the grass and the teamsters wip- 
ing the sweat of the day from the horses' sides? Who 
hath built the bed of boughs and laid them in shingle 
fashion without longing to kiss the earth that gives 



152 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

us repose ? Who hath fed by the camp-fire in the first 
glimmer of the dusk with the music of the river sing- 
ing songs of out-doors sweeter than the antiphonies of 
the choir in cathedral? 

It is blessed to be out of doors — wholesome and re- 
invigorating for any man ; and the hardship is recom- 
pensed always by the reliefs. We sit about the camp- 
fire as the chill of the evening falls and, drinking the 
tea and eating the rough food of the woods, find in it 
nectar sweeter than we had deramed could exist this 
side of Olympus. It is wonderful ! The air clean and 
sweet ; the day full of dying glory ; the evening stars ; 
the forms, gathered about the camp-fire silhouetted 
against the flaming west ! 

The world does not go out of doors enough. And 
it does not mean distance. It is anywhere that rivers 
run, grasses grow, birds sing and the stars come out. 
You can find comfort and distress alike under the stars 
and under a roof. It was no hardship to roll up in a 
blanket and lie on the bare earth with only a few 
boughs of the fir-tree under the head. The rolling over 
in the night is not all that it is cracked up to be; but 
then you usually sleep too soundly to be turning over. 
The mosquitoes sing rather emphatically in August; 
but then you can pull something over your head and 
stow your arms and defy them. It is so vivid that, in 
memory at this moment, I see through the cloth of the 
tent sides the flickering of the camp-fire and the gleam 
of the lantern, flickering about among the horses as 
the teamsters give them the parting good-night atten- 
tion. And then the teamster comes in and lies down 
by my side and sinks into audible slumber and I dream 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 153 

and think and hear the river sing and far away hear 
the hoot-owl calling over the forest's waste. 

Once, in the night, I awoke and heard the horses 
stamping. It was near to two o'clock as I saw by my 
flash lamp and watch. Away off was a strange sound 
that I have said was like the swinging of a heavy iron 
sledge on a drill. I called to the teamsters and we 
went out. The sky was serene and the stars were 
twinkling, but the river fog was coming in over the 
valley. We listened to the sound and the teamster 
who is a college graduate and an over-seas "Y" man 
with a record of many passages in transport service 
said nothing except that he "did not know." At least 
the horses were all right and I mentioned the fact sug- 
gested in Robert Louis Stevenson's story of his night 
in the woods with his donkey. Perhaps it was a part 
of that mysterious hour of 2 A.M. as Robert Louis 
said, when the earth seems to breathe and the animals 
arouse; and men turn over in their beds; and birds 
stir in their nests and the horses tethered to their 
stakes, grow restless. 

The camp-fire is a bed of coals and glowing red as 
a giant's eye in the gloom of the mists. We toss on an- 
other log. It blazes high. The open door of the tent 
is calling. We go back again ; fall to sleep and know no 
more until the call "Roll out-t-t-t" comes at 4 A.M. and 
the day has begun again around the same camp-fire as 
saw us depart beneath the evening stars to rest. 




ON "GOING TO THE MOVIES" 

HAVE some friends who say that they do not 
enjoy the movies. "Neither do I," is my re- 
sponse. Yet, we meet about twice a week — at 
the movies. I notice that those who care the 
least about them go the most often. 

The other evening I went to the movies 
alone. It was a good play. The hero was a hot-tem- 
pered boy who had a cool-tempered father. The vil- 
lain was an understudy to the villainess, a blonde 
thing with a capacity for weeping large tears that 
glistened in the camera. Any one could see right away 
that she was bad. But the boy-hero couldn't. He was 
a diver by trade and she wanted some gold from a 
sunken treasure ship. He agreed to go down if she 
would marry him. I never suffered more in my life 
than I did during that ceremony. I wanted to get up 
and yell, "You darn fool." After the wedding they 
come home to their simple Maine seaside home and 
look at the marriage certificate. There is always a 
marriage certificate in the "movies." He goes im- 
mediately down into the depths and brings up some 
gold. It seemed a trifle, not over a wage-scale figure 
for diving, but it served for the story. The boy goes 
out for a time to get the air and comes home to find 
the marriage certificate torn up and all the pictures 
askew and the wife fled with her lover. The boy goes 
mad and bleeds at the nose and then — I found myself 
sitting in the theatre with my hat on — I was that 
excited. 

Then there was a cabaret scene in Boston — the 
like of which I never saw in Boston and I've been 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 155 

about a bit, and then the boy's father comes into Boston 
by the Boston boat from Maine, and goes right to the 
wayward villainess's table where she is sitting dolled 
up like an empress and where she sits with her sneer- 
ing lover whose mustache curls up in approved style 
of villainy. Then the old man yanks the girl from her 
chair and fights his way out and smashes the villain 
on the nose. 

Then I came to and found myself chewing the rim 
off my $10.50 brown leghorn hat (50 cents for luxury 
tax, whereas the hat will wear me ten years). 

Then the old man drags the girl to the Boston boat 
and locks her into a state-room. I saw him and yelled 
approval and stomped and kicked so hard that the chap 
in front of me turned around and glared. Then I was 
permitted to see the beautiful, wicked young blonde 
loose the shoulder straps of her passamenterie ball 
dress and begin to disrobe, and then when things were 
rather embarrassing and I was swallowing the ribbon 
on my hat, the scene mercifully changed to the outside 
of the state-room and the villain was knocking on the 
door. And then the villainess opened it just as though 
the old gent hadn't locked it. More lolling around in 
negligee followed and the man took off his coat, vest 
and collar, just to indicate familiarity and wickedness. 
The scene now shifted to the pilot-house. "Fog is com- 
ing on, Cap'n," said the mate. All is consternation! 
A derelict heaves in view. But the steamboat captains 
can't see it, even though the photographers could. 
Steamboat rammed the derelict. Terrible shipwreck. 
All saved but the villain and the villainess. 

What of it? Why worry? I will tell you why we 
should worry. The foolish hero is delirious at home 



156 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

up in Dorcasville, Me., yelling for his wife his father is 
bringing home as a soporific. Enter father without 
the wicked wife. Tearful struggle. Son rushes from 
the house with his diving suit yelling, "I will see her." 
Goes to wreck and sees the wicked wife and her para- 
mour in close embrace, dead. Horrible sight! Boy's 
life line catches on a peg in steamer's side in the deep 
seas and the poor young man is doomed to die. Fa- 
ther plunges in; rescues the son; son makes up with 
father; and immediately the nice village maid who 
early and often loved the foolish hero, brings him a 
small pie to help him on toward his convalescence. The 
pie seems to bring the lad back to love. It was prob- 
ably a blueberry pie. At any rate, he embraces the 
girl and father embraces them both and all is well. 
End! 

Why do I like it? Action! Action! That's the 
word. World is hungry for "something doing." When 
weary with business, philosophy, high-brow stuff, gim- 
me a movie as is a movie, and I'll eat my hat and be 
happy. I don't like the movies ! Say ! What's on to- 
night? 



ON "PRODIGIES" 




^ OU CAN'T make a prodigy out of every child ; 
but perhaps you can teach children more when 
they are very young. Seemingly ordinary 
children have been made into wonders when 
they have had wonderful teachers. We have 
had a notion that it does not do to force in- 
fant minds. Some others believe that you ought to 
begin forcing the mind as soon as you force the legs. 
If you did not ask a child to use its legs in walking 
until he were four years old, he would be slow to run. 
We let children's minds go wool-gathering until they 
are partially atrophied. Start in on the mind as soon 
as you do with the muscles. 

Is this true? I don't know. I desire, simply, to set 
you to thinking. Wonderful what has been done in this 
respect! John Stuart Mill's father was a wonderful 
teacher — learned in the classics, historian, et cetera! 
he had John Stuart educated according to the Mill that 
grinds, himself the miller. Some of the books say that 
James Mill, the father, "unwisely forced the son be- 
yond his years." But John Stuart Mill has left an im- 
mortal name — growing as authority as Spencer de- 
clines. He began to study Greek at three. At seven 
he had read all Greek classics in the original. At ten 
he had mastered mathematics. At ten he read Latin 
as well as English. At twelve he had done with books 
as anything but tools and had begun on constructive 
thinking, and his observations on logic began to be the 
foundation of his father's compilation. John Stuart 
Mill never played with other boys and never knew that 



158 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

he was learned until he came to manhood. He simply 
thought that all other boys could read Greek as well 
as English and had all poets, all philosophies at his 
tongue's end. Mill never went to school except to his 
father until he was fifteen. 

John Fiske had a wonderful grandmother. She be- 
lieved that she was dealing with a record breaker, in 
John, and she was. When her baby genius was just 
toddling, she began to prepare him for college. At 
seven years of age he was reading Caesar's Commen- 
taries in Latin ; making wise observations on the Tenth 
Legion ; perusing Josephus for light reading and delv- 
ing into Plato in the original. 

At nine he spoke Greek. When he was ten he had 
read all of Prescott, Motley, Gibbon, Macaulay and 
Edward Gibbon. For a test to his memory he wrote 
a history of the world from Moses down to the date of 
his own birth, giving a list of the greatest men who 
had ever lived and a brief mention of what they had 
done. This book is still in existence. 

When twelve, he had read Virgil, Sallust, Ovid, 
Juvenal and Catullus in the original. He had also mas- 
tered trigonometry, surveying, navigation, geometry 
and differential calculus. Before he was out of knee 
breeches he kept his diary in Spanish, spoke German 
like a native, read German philosophy in German, 
wrote poems in Italian and had translated Cervantes 
into English. At seventeen he read the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures like a rabbi and was familiar with Sanscrit. 

John Fiske was no bookworm. If there was any- 
thing else he did not do, find it. He smoked like a 
furnace and, alas, he drank beer like a toper. He was 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 159 

a fine, healthy, likable, mischievous chap. He was ad- 
mitted to Harvard without any examination. There 
was not a college professor who had half the knowl- 
edge that he had under his hat. Students and profes- 
sors looked on him with wonder. He studied thirteen 
hours a day at Harvard and grew fat on it. Prophecies 
were made that he would eclipse Humboldt, Newton 
and Mill. 

Here the dissertation ends. I am talking, purely 
about acquiring knowledge. What Fiske did with it 
was his affair. He was a great power in education, 
but no great discovery is attached to his name. He 
did not leave the heritage of Newton, Humboldt or 
John Stuart Mill. He smoked too much; was too sed- 
entary; drank too much; was too lazy physically. He 
died of fatty degeneration. That was John Fiske's af- 
fair. His mind was a marvel. It comprehended wider 
range of pure learning than perhaps any other that 
ever lived. 

My thesis is along the line of these two men. Could 
other minds have been developed by similar direction ; 
by taking them when they were very young and in- 
stead of teaching them baby talk and kindergarten, 
teach them the realities ? 

I don't know. John Fiske developed only one great 
scientific truth — the strength of mental development in 
any animal is in proportion to its infancy or the length 
of time involved in its reaching physical maturity. 

Note the emphasis on physical. Rare-ripes gener- 
ally fall early. Newton and Humboldt developed 
slowly. Each lived to be over eighty. It is up to you. 




ON "CERTAIN NOISES" 

=^ HE "putt-putt-putt — " of a noisy motor boat is 
the beginning of this talk. Why is it, that its 
intrusive and insistent noise is so disturbing? 
I have heard it of a morning and I know^ that 
some lobster fisherman is out earning an hon- 
est plutocracy pulling his traps, a perfectly 
fair procedure, yet it disturbs me. I can hear him 
coming from afar; hear him stop; start; snap out a 
couple of blasts; stop; start; go a few rods; stop and 
die away. But I know he is going to begin again. I 
can hear birds sing — they lull me to sleep. I can hear 
winds sough and sigh; raindrops fall — they induce 
sleep, but this will not. I can hear a person snore in a 
summer camp provided he keeps on the job. But if 
he is one of those snorers who stop ; pass oflf the earth ; 
gurgle; stir in bed; begin to gather strength; snuffle; 
sob and finally blast forth again in another movement 
of the same concerto of noise and adenoid, why then I 
cannot sleep. I can lull myself to sleep in a boiler fac- 
tory, or in a newspaper office with the steady mumble 
of hammers or machinery ; but I couldn't go to sleep if 
a person were humming "Bubbles" in the next room. 
I can hardly keep awake to the rumble of the car 
wheels, the roar of passing trains, the echoes of empty 
stations through which the night express dashes on, 
but I can't sleep when a couple are whispering in the 
next section. "Drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds, 
but a boy beating a drum wakes the dead." 

It is the rhythm of things that answers the ques- 
tion and along with that the adjustment of your being 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 161 

to two essentials, excuse and regularity. A man run- 
ning a lawn mower in the next yard at 4 o'clock in the 
morning, would be unobjectionable if he did not have 
to stop now and then to wipe his chin. If the nuisance 
only were not intermittent, he would become a part of 
the regular environment; but when I hear him I com- 
pare his enterprise with mine, his preparedness with 
mine, and I damn him into flinders for presuming to 
stop and start, like the motor boat man. Give us a 
world where motor boats, lawn mowers, wood sawyers 
and snorers, all motored, mowed, sawed and snored all 
the time and we would accommodate ourselves to them. 
This is why loving couples exist where both snore or 
either snores. Nobody is beyond adaptation; few en- 
joy the process. 

Rhythm is the thing! The world is running very 
smoothly when the motors purr dreamily like the old 
cat on the hearth rug. It is the dissonance that shatters 
nerves. Thus music ministers, and bird-song joined to 
sea-song and earth-song make for peace and divine 
aspiration. When you go romping around the neigh- 
borhood making certain noises that interrupt nature, 
hold your neighbors in suspense as to what kind of a 
devilish cacophony you are going to perpetrate next, 
you are a sinner. It is up to you to put a muffler on 
your motot and plush lining on your lawn mower, or 
else run them on a rhythmic principle without inter- 
ruption or doubt as to when you are going to resume. 
You know that old story of the man who roomed over 
a nervous person. He was undressing and thought- 
lessly dropped a boot on the floor. He bethought him- 
self and laid the next boot softly down and went to bed. 



162 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

An hour later, a bang came on his door and this ner- 
vous person stood without, asking "Why ! Why in hell 
don't you drop that other boot?" It was regularity and 
completeness of the job, that he required. 

So, too, in all the world. We ask regularity, 
rhythm, completeness. We ask peace without inter- 
ruption, the whole song in the day's work. Our nerves 
are frayed by selfishness, striving, envy, malice, hatred, 
bitterness, war, wrong, sin, injustice ! These are akin 
to the certain noises of a summer dawn. They are in- 
terrupted rhythm. God intends somewhere, sometime, 
somehow, to still them and give us a dawn in which 
Nature shall alone sing and sing. And it shall be as 
the pulse beat of the Creator. 



ON "GRAVES BY THE RIVER" 

LL ALONG the way of a Maine stream far 
from civilization, which we tramped last 
week, were occasional stones, huge blocks of 
granite on which were chiselings of dates, 
names or initials. 

These were the mausoleums of drowned 
river drivers, thus memorialized in granite far more 
glorious than those of cemeteries of the rich — for they 
were by the side of the streams in which they lost their 
lives and within sound of the running waters. 

One of these huge stones weighed possibly two hun- 
dred tons, its crest 25 feet high over the stream, its 
base in the lapping waters. This was on the Wissata- 
quoik stream, a quiet August brook, yet a raging tor- 
rent in the spring. On the very top of this huge rock 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 163 

was lodged a log, left there by the receding waters 
last spring. It hung thus far above the river and sil- 
houetted against the sky line. On this rock also was 
the name of a drowned river driver. 

Coming down the ford some of our party picked up 
the skull of a drowned man — one who was lost in the 
drive about a year ago. None of these men were ever 
brought out to their homes in the olden days; though 
they are brought out now if their bodies be recovered. 
Times have changed for the better or the worse, as 
you may estimate it. Personally, I would prefer to 
have my name chiseled on one of these giant rocks and 
sleep beneath it within the sound of the many waters 
and the radiance of the evening suns and the dawns 
magnificent. But most of those old-time river drivers 
were rovers and often wastrels who had no family con- 
nections and none to claim them or give them burial. 

There is something impressive in these places of 
the dead. The birds nest about them and the camping 
grounds of old-time drivers are near at hand. I 
climbed up on top of one of them and looked over the 
winding stream, now babbling along. In the days of 
the drive it is a rushing torrent, the waters running 
through the bushes; the logs piling in huge pyramids 
swaying beneath the power of the flood. Often eight 
hours would change it from one condition to the other 
and a sharp rain would make it appalling as the drive 
came tearing in and the jam mounted to the skies. It 
was then no time for the boss to say "go" ; he must say 
"come." Men lived in the water; slept on the bare 
ground in soaking clothes, often in the snow ; lived on 
rough fare and hard work and yet had their triumphs ; 
their joys and their raptures. 



164 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Some one ought to write a book on old-time river 
bosses and contractors for log driving. I never was so 
impressed by it as I was by a summer tramp over their 
now silent land. It seems to be a passing business — 
or rather a shifting business, new variations and new 
quirks to it. It has become more gentlemanly; more 
business-like and more considerate of human life now 
than then and in better condition. Tales of such old- 
timers as Russ Loveland would make good reading, for 
their human interest and their humor. 

All told, there is something in bucking up against 
nature that is different from bucking up against the 
town. Here is nature as cold and cruel as life and 
death. The rain and the snow fall on men and women 
and pay no attention to their sufferings. There are 
but few things for shelter and none for comfort. 
Hunger is the mainspring of life. Want is the funda- 
mental of economics. These men lying under the 
stones by the voiceful river are soldiers in the cause of 
humanity as much as is the soldier under the poppies. 
Hearts that are sore for those who lie afar, may per- 
haps get some comfort from the thought of these chis- 
eled letters by the river of the north. One may well 
believe that thousands of memories turn daily countless 
times to distant memorials over graves of the dead. I 
am pleased to turn a thought to these rude stones of 
forgotten humble men, who gave their lives for hu- 
manity. It was a battle against Nature. It was a part 
of the economic law of life. 

So many things in this world have compensations. 
I have been among these old river drivers this week — 
many of them, yet in the game, and showing deep 
pride in their past as men of accomplishment. Others 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 165 

have graduated to operators, men of wealth and influ- 
ence, bankers and farmers, and yet all of their talk is 
of the conquest of things. I am convinced by these 
rude stones; by the etchings of kindly hands in me- 
morial, by the lives of power, that the law of life is 
work and that the only abiding joy is in accomplish- 
ment. 



ON "GRANDFATHER'S CLOCKS" 




RANDFATHER always wound up his clock 
every night at ten minutes of nine o'clock and 
went to bed. Had the king been his guest, as 
he never was; were the minister there visit- 
ing at the protracted meeting, it made no dif- 
ference, grandfather took out his old hunter- 
case silver watch, rubbed the cases abstractedly and 
lovingly with the stub of his thumb, cut off by acci- 
dent at the first joint; took the watch key from the 
peg; wound the watch ostentatiously as a warning to 
young people of the passing of the hours and then, with 
steady step, approached the old clock in the corner with 
"Thomas Hoadley" in red letters on the dial, wound it 
loudly and then marched heavily and directly to re- 
pose. And when the clock struck nine he was in the 
sheets and pressed into the feather bed. 

Old tall clocks have passed as insignia of thrift and 
regularity. Modern clocks are badges of plenty and 
many chimes. They have none of the odor of the foun- 
ders; little of the mystery of the real antique. Often 
the odor of stale tobacco and the fumigation of the low 
Dutch was in those old clocks brought from over seas ; 



166 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

some of them with ships heaving on billows to the tick- 
ing; some of them with wooden works and wooden 
pendulums and high pedestals in which the old chaps 
could hide a jug of rum for the afternoon toddy. One 
of them that I once saw had an old cannon ball for a 
pendulum said to be of the War of 1812. Forty years 
ago, I wrote about an old clock in Canton with a proved 
age of 180 years, in one family. Alna and Whitefield, 
Me., were full of these old clocks brought over from 
Birmingham by old ship owners, the best of them made 
by Osborne and Wilson, having brass works, moon 
faces, mahogany cases and made to run eight days. 

There was an old lady in Lisbon, Me., who had a 
clock that one of the collectors tried to buy thirty-five 
years ago. I know about it for the collector told me 
about it at the time and I am merely recalling old mem- 
ories of early days of newspaper reporting. 

She declined to sell. Here was her story of the rea- 
son why. "One day," said she, "after dinner I sat down 
to heel a stocking. The old clock stood there in the 
corner of the kitchen. When the Deacon, my husband, 
was alive he used to tend the clock. He would get up 
every Sunday mornin', build the fire, shave himself, 
wind up the clock and then sit down and drink two cups 
of Java coffee for his breakfast. He was very regular 
in his habits. He never ate his Sunday breakfast until 
he had wound the clock and he never touched it in any 
way except on Sunday mornin'. He never wound up 
the clock and then shaved; he always shaved and then 
wound up the clock. And it was always jest about the 
same time every Sunday mornin' that he got around 
to winding the clock. And that would be about twen- 
ty-five minutes of eight. Then he drank his two cups 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 167 

of Java without sweetenin' and then read his Bible 
until time to go to church. 

"After he died I couldn't bear to touch the clock no- 
how. I tried to wind it up the next Sunday mornin' 
but somehow it seemed so much like takin* his place, 
that I couldn't do it. So it run down and never was 
wound up afterwards. Well, as I was a-sayin', I set 
down to heel that stockin' in the afternoon I was tellin' 
you about when I happened to think that it was just 
two years ago to the day that the Deacon died. I was 
a feelin' kinder sad and lonesome when suddenly I 
heard the old clock in the kitchen. It sounded as 
though it was strugglin'. I ain't superstitious, sir, but 
it sounded to me jest like a husky gurglin' in a dyin' 
man's throat, jest as though he was a tryin' to say 
somethin' to me. The noise lasted only a moment or 
two and then the clock struck twice.' I don't know 
what happened to me, but when I come to, folks was 
throwin' water in my face. I had the old clock stowed 
away and now money couldn't buy it from me." 

I suppose more last wills and testaments have been 
found behind old tall clocks than in any other place; 
wills, bills, receipts and other important papers. Why? 
Because there was formality in dealing with the clock, 
in an old-fashioned home. Its winding and treatment 
were the prerogative of the head of the family. He 
alone touched it. Woe to the boy who peered into its 
case or touched its slowly swinging pendulum. 

How many hours, as a boy, have I lain in the little 
room adjoining the kitchen and heard its slow stroke 
ticking away the hours of my early life! What time 
may be — not even the clock could tell; only the echoes 




168 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

of its passing stirred the room and wearied the im- 
petuous pulses of childhood. Age tended the clock. 
Age respected it as the sole arbiter of the swift flying 
hours of the sun. Childhood hated it. But childhood 
respected it ; for then it meant something. 



ON "SOPSEY-VINES" 

AN YOU see, perchance, on this August morn- 
ing, the back door of an old farm house 
stealthily opening and a small, barefoot boy 
standing there with bare head looking off to- 
ward the eternal hills? It is years long gone, 
and far away stretch the dusty roads, silent 
of the horn of the motorist, untouched perchance by 
even the passing wheel of the country wagon, the dust 
lying damp in the dews and the spider's webs along the 
fence rails glistening in the rising sun. 

It is the beginning of the day of the orchard's fruit- 
age and down the hill, past the pig-pen, through the 
shed, toward the brook with low-hanging elms over its 
course, the mowed fields stretch away with the apple- 
trees among them, cannily placed along the neighbor's 
fence that there might be so much the more land for 
hay. Here are the old trees; and each of them you 
know; all of their fruit you have sampled; each knurl 
and knot you know; each bird's nest is yours; each 
cuckoo that calls from the branches has been the ob- 
ject of your fruitless hunting with sling-shot. 

It is first come, first served, in your family. First 
boy out under the apple tree, gets evening's fall and 
the morning's dull and soundless dropping. You ! Oh 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 169 

boy, are early. The others are in their beds in the hot 
attic, their stubbed toes peeping out from under the 
cotton sheet and the frowsly heads buried in the sweet 
morning sleep of boyhood. There is a repugnance to 
the trip across the field. Every old-fashioned boy re- 
calls it. The stubble is wet ; the stubble is prickly ; the 
spiders' webs are ominous; snakes are said to be in 
the grass; there were rumors of a real "adder" being 
in the field the other day; the way is far; the cold 
water on a boy's feet, in early and sleepy dawn, is not 
pleasant to a boy who hates water only when it is fun. 
You do recall the piercing of the stubble, don't you? 
You do recall the fragrance of the pig-pen. You do re- 
call the odor of caraway and dank herbs, such as yellow 
dock and burdock, along the door as you swing it open 
and brush the juices of the weeds into action. You do 
recall stepping gingerly through the long, long path to 
the tree, that is the object of your journey. You do, 
somehow, recall the breezes that lifted the hair about 
your brow; the song of morning birds; the fleck of 
smoke from early kitchen fires as it arose upon the air, 
the fleecy clouds, the feelings of youth — for these be 
the undying memories that surge again upon us, even 
though we be gray and old. And do you recall the 
picture on the ground under the old "Sopsy-Vine" ? 
There they were ! Such monsters ! Red, streaked with 
white ; elongated ; covered with dew ; cold as ice ; hardly 
bruised — Sops of Wine, indeed! Such apples nobody 
ever saw before, much less tasted ; such apples no one, 
surely not you, will ever taste again. You sank your 
teeth into one of them, then and there, although hardly 
out of bed. The juices crinkled around your tongue 



170 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

and ran out of the corners of your mouth. The sweet- 
ness and the tartness and the flavor of grapes, straw- 
berries and things which you then had never tasted, 
but which were yet in the apple, filtered through your 
system. ! For another apple like that today ! 

I will leave you there, old-timer, under the apple- 
tree, crowding the scant pockets of your little linen 
pants with the dripping wet apples, until the stems 
pricked the flesh of your leg. I will leave you there fill- 
ing the front tail of your shirt with them. I will leave 
you there eating toward a belly-ache with the blue- 
birds laughing at you, the winds playing with you, the 
bees bumbling about you, the crickets crawling up your 
bare legs. 

I will come with you, old-timer, to your study or 
your office, and I will sit by you and put my hand on 
your shoulder and say, "Never mind ! You are right 
about it. Sopsy-vines are all gone. There are no ap- 
ples dropping now, in the August nights. There are 
no early-morning boys. You and I were the last. The 
trees are gone from the garden wall and all of the 
apples nowadays are imitations, developed synthet- 
ically, marketed before they fall; robbed of juice and 
never touched by the dew." I will say that, although, 
surely, it is not true. But I will say it because we shall 
both feel the better for saying it, knowing and hoping 
that it may not be true. 

For alas! the world could not spare the "Sopsy- 
Vine" ; nor the Boy ; nor the cloud ; nor the bluebird. 
Let us, dear friends, see to it that they be not sep- 
arated by artificialities. Let us see to it boys yet shall 
rise in the dawn and seek their own apples. Let us 
know that down the ages untold come boys and boys 
and boys from Adam to the world without end. 




ON "AN OLD NOTION OF 
WAR'S ENDING" 

fN 1838, Samuel F. B. Morse exhibited before 
Congress the first working electrical tele- 
graph. In 1840 (eighty years ago, and within 
the lives of many men now living) , it became 
a practical device for the quick transmission 
of intelligence. 
The smokes raised on distant hills by the Indians, 
the arms of semaphores on high hills in France were 
forms of telegraph ; and the story of the dormouse that 
troubled the gardens of the telegrapher in the tale of 
Monte Cristo, illustrates the perfection of its use (and 
misuse) in earlier days. 

I have been interested in some contemporary obser- 
vations on the electric telegraph, have read some old 
newspapers of that day which relate in apparent 
amazement the wondrous tale. The world of that day 
stood before it as children stand before the Christmas 
tree, all its candles alight and full of wondrous gifts, 
wondering what it will bring to each one personally. 

Similar reflections occur in the coming of other 
epoch-making inventions. One of them occurs force- 
fully in relation to the typewriter which has possibly 
done as much to reconstruct business methods as any 
other and I have yet other data concerning the coming 
of the telephone. In each of them, as well as of the 
wireless, the submarine, the airship, the electric light 
and the trolley, the attitude of society has steadily de- 
veloped from amazement and doubt and the wildest 
conjecture, to apathy, until today we look to science to 



172 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

solve our major problems as it seems to be solving 
those of Germany in its later discoveries of how to 
make something (nay, practically everjrthing) out of 
nothing — that "nothing" being its limitless areas of 
"brown coal." 

In 1856, Col. Thomas H. Benton published his 
"Thirty Years* View." Col. Benton was a great Mis- 
sourian and he differed from the average man from 
Missouri. He not merely wanted to know but he did 
know, and he knew some things that were not so. In 
his famous book recounting his thirty years' service 
in Congress, chiefly if not wholly, as United States 
Senator, he refers to the electric telegraph. Col. Ben- 
ton was inclined to prophecy, as he was to argument. 
No man of his age exerted more influence in debate; 
few spoke more frequently; none hated war more 
fiercely, and from the days of the Mexican War to the 
Civil War he fought armed aggression tooth and nail, 
by word, by deed, by vote. 

You may be interested as I have been, to read what 
Col. Benton says in his book about the electric tele- 
graph. In 1844, the first line of telegraph was in oper- 
ation between Washington and New York, and in 1856, 
when the Thirty Years' View was published, it was 
working over 80,000 miles of wire in America, and 
50,000 miles in Europe. At this time Col. Benton 
wrote : 

"It is one of the marvelous results of science, put- 
ting people who are thousands of miles apart in instant 
communication with the accuracy of a face to face con- 
versation. Its wonderful advantages are felt in so- 
cial, communal, political and military communications 
and in conjunction with the steam car, is destined to 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 173 

work a total revolution in the art of defensive w^arfare. 
It puts an end to defensive war on the ocean, to the 
necessity of fortifications, except to delay for a few 
days the bombardment of a city. The approach of in- 
vaders upon any point, telegraphed through the coun- 
try, brings down in the flying cars, the myriads of cit- 
izen soldiers, arms in hand and provisions in abundance, 
to overwhelm with numbers any possible invading 
force. It will dispense with fleets and standing armies 
and all the vast, cumbrous and expensive machinery 
of a modern army. Far from dreading an invasion, 
the telegraph and the car may defy and dare it — may 
invite any number of foreign troops to land — and as- 
sure the whole of them death or captivity from the 
myriads of volunteers launched upon them hourly from 
the first moment of landing until the last invader is 
a corpse or a prisoner." 

Was not this, so far as Senator Benton went, a fine 
example of knowing a great deal that was not so ? In 
six years from the time of the publication of this book 
of his, the United States was an armed camp. In 
eight years, standing armies greater than ever seen 
before in history, bivouaced and fought all over the 
soil of the South, and the sea was girt with ships in 
all sorts of warfare. Within the life time of his son, 
had he one, were to come transmission of speech al- 
most around the world; transmission of intelligence 
without wires ; ships beneath the sea and through the 
air, and a war in which more people were engaged than 
were in the confines of the United States when Col. 
Benton wrote his book. In 1836, he deprecated the 
enormous expenditures of the Federal government at 
25 millions of dollars. Today we appropriate more 



174 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

than that to please the passing whim of some school 
of philanthropy seeking to practice a higher school of 
eugenics. 

Is not there a lesson in this? The lesson of prog- 
ress ! No invention comes that does not form the step- 
ping stone to something greater. The next great in- 
vention is to be the discovery of a new force, an inex- 
pensive source of energy in the atomic energy itself. 
Germany has solved her problems of fuel and many of 
its by-products. We shall stop organized war when 
we disarm the world through the medium of the Golden 
Rule — never by invention, deadly though it be. There 
will yet be deadlier. 



ON "WHAT OUR FATHERS READ" 

ANY FRIENDS have commented on our recent 
suggestions concerning reading aloud. It ap- 
pears to be more common than we suspected 
and yet most of the comments are those of 
regret, along with us, at the passing of a won- 
derfully helpful custom in families. 
Possibly one of the reasons why it prevails less than 
formerly is because of the superabundance of books 
nowadays — one for each member of the family each 
hour of the day, if he choose. Once a book was a treas- 
ure; now it is quite otherwise. Modern life has less 
regard for things that once were priceless. A boy's 
sled, a fine sled, worth several dollars of dad's money, 
has been left in my front yard for a week, by some 
boy who came there sliding with the other children. 
The snows buried it ; but I have let it remain. Do you 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 175 

suppose that forty years ago (when a boy's sled was 
almost as important to him as his automobile would be 
now), his sled would have remained out of his imme- 
diate keeping for even one night. Boys are surfeited 
with luxuries nowadays and, earning nothing by their 
own labors, esteem but little the things that admiring 
parents and loving relatives shower upon them. 

So it is with books. I have been interested to look 
over the advertisement of an old bookseller in Boston, 
of the date of 1796. What sort of books do you sup- 
pose they sold in those days? Well, I can tell you 
something of their reading from this catalogue, and 
from what 1 have read elsewhere about the old-fash- 
ioned folk of ours, here in New England. 

They read the "Life of Dr. Benjamin Franklin" 
which had by this time become a classic. Franklin died 
in 1790 at the age of 84. This could be read on Sun- 
days, but not the life of Baron Trenck, which was the 
most adventurous of books and which is good lively 
reading at this day. His escapes from prison are most 
thrilling. But, as Thomas Bailey Aldrich says in his 
"Story of a Bad Boy," it never came from its closet of 
a Sunday. Morse's Geography was highly esteemed. 
I have a copy of this funny little book, somewhere 
among my belongings. And there were "Boyle's Voy- 
ages and Adventures in Several Parts of the World, 
full of Various and Amazing Turns of Fortune." This 
book was a pure fiction and surely was full of amazing 
turns of fortune including the story of Mrs. Villars 
with whom he escaped from Barbary, innumerable 
tales of pirates and gold. They approved of this book, 
especially for week days. 



176 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Carver's Travels in America is a book that you 
would like to find and read nowadays, I fancy. John 
Carver was a captain in the French and Indian War 
and he started in 1766 to explore the West and to reach 
the Pacific. He never reached the Pacific ; but he ex- 
plored a lot around Lake Superior and the Falls of St. 
Anthony and his book is lively. His escape from hos- 
tile Indians ranks well up among vivid tales of authen- 
tic adventures. We find in this catalogue a book that 
would be most interesting today: "The English Her- 
mit ; or the unparalleled sufferings and surprising ad- 
ventures of Philip Quarll, an Englishman who was dis- 
covered by a Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol Merchant, 
upon an uninhabited island in the South Sea where he 
had lived for fifty years without any human assist- 
ance." Quarll declined to quit the island but gave the 
story of his life. Our grandfathers read it with avidity. 
It is a poor imitation of Robinson Crusoe, in some 
respects. 

For fiction in those days there are such books as 
Fannie Burney's Evelina and her Cecilia, Sanford and 
Merton, Rasselas, Tom Jones, Sterne's Sentimental 
Journey, Pamela, Roderick Random, Mysteries of 
Udolpho, The Sicilian Romance. Lewis's "The Monk" 
had just appeared but was not in this catalogue al- 
though England was ringing with it and with the new 
fame of the boy about twenty, who had written it. 
Desmond by the once admired Charlotte S. Smith, and 
Henry Brooke's wearisome Fool of Quality, are in this 
list. There are also Zeluco and Henry McKenzie's 
"Man of Feeling." Many of these books were coarse 
in speech and vulgarly out-spoken. They were stilted 
in style, too often. Only the simple ones have en- 
dured. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 177 

Sermons ! This catalogue is full of them and of 
medical books, Scriptural commentary. Poems! Gold- 
smith, Thomson, Peter Pindar, Young's Night 
Thoughts, Dr. Watts and what is this? Ovid's Art of 
Love. Amazing antidote and bane! Great catholicity 
in this book-shop, for next to Pilgrim's Progress and 
Paley's Philosophy is Paine (Tom) "Age of Reason" — 
awful book of radicalism for the times — or any time. 
And what a variety of "Companions" for Young 
Women and Companions for Young Men — ^books on 
behavior and elegance. Chesterfield's Letters, Roche- 
foucauld's Maxims also ; "Speakers" ; elegant extracts ! 

Down in the bottom of this catalogue comes finally 
that treasure house of romance, the "Chapman Books." 
Who would not like to browse about among that book- 
store in Boston or was it Leominster, as it was in 1796, 
and pick up a few first editions of Evelina, for instance. 
This was about the field of reading of the beginning 
of the 18th century. But they did make much of them 
and became wise and studious and good readers and 
writers. 






ON "THE SLEEPING CHILD" 

N THE barber shop, the other day, a little boy 
lay asleep, waiting for his father. The little 
chap rested his head on his arm ; his lips a wee 
bit parted; his breath coming and going as 
gently as the floating of thistle down ; his fair 
hair in ringlets about his damp brow ; in his 
hand a rubber ball, tightly clenched. 

It recalled to me the story called "David Swan" 
that we used to read in the old school books (one of the 
truly great stories of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales) — 
of the boy who set out to walk to town and who loitered 
at the wayside spring and fell aSleep. First came a 
man and woman in a fine carriage, stopping by the 
spring to water the horses and to rest a moment in 
the shade. The sleeping lad discloses his fair young 
face to the rich merchant and his wife and stirs mem- 
ories of their own boy who had died and left them 
childless. They nearly wake the sleeping boy with a 
proposal to make him their son by adoption if possible, 
and thus put him in succession to a long line of fame 
and riches. But a trivial incident supervenes and they 
pass on, leaving him asleep, his little belongings clasped 
in his hand. Next comes a maiden seeking the seclu- 
sion of the wayside spring to fix her falling garter. 
The lad so fair and beautiful catches her eye and a 
blush mantles her cheek as she sees him unconscious. 
Thoughts of romance and of love stir her. She dreams 
of the fair lad and in fancy creates the home and the 
fireside. She stays there with him for a time, hoping 
that he may awake — and then passes on. Next come 
two thieves loitering at the spring to divide their 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 179 

booty. They catch sight of the sleeping lad. He stirs 
uneasily. The robbers draw a knife and hold it sus- 
pended over the heart of the boy. He sinks again to 
sleep. The robbers divide their booty and, like the 
others, pass on their way leaving David Swan asleep, 
soon, however, to awake, look about, collect his tiny 
possessions, drink again from the bubbling spring and 
resume his way to town — unconscious that during his 
sleep. Riches had stopped at his side and passed by; 
that Love had come and gone its way, leaving him none 
the wiser for its beckoning, and that Death also had 
stood over him and waited only on the stirring of his 
limbs, the faintest indication of his consciousness, to 
descend on him like a pall. 

There is nothing more suggestive of pathos and 
beauty and all the thoughts that this tale arouses than 
the sleeping child. Mothers and fathers love to stand 
by the side of the little ones lying fair, innocent and 
sheltered in their little beds. Many a "dad" would be 
ashamed to have it known even to his wife, how many 
times he has gone stealthily up the stairs all alone to 
get a glimpse of the little chap — poor little devil — so 
helpless with all the world before him. If the old "dad" 
has not felt his throat tighten and known the tear on 
the eyelid he is different from most "dads." Here be- 
fore him is childhood, most beautiful, most fair and 
rosy, delicate as the petals of a flower. Out there, as 
"dad" stands in the suffused light of the room, is the 
roar of the world. The rumble of trains ; the passing 
of the automobile with grinding gears ; a hum like the 
distant roar of wild beasts — the voice of the World ! 
The winds may rattle the shutters ; the storm of snow 



180 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

or sleet or rain may drive against the pane — ^the ele- 
ments against the sleeping child ! Here is peace — out 
there are Fame, Riches, Love, Death ; any one of which 
may wait upon him to touch him as he sleeps. 

The little boy held his toys in his hand ! The little 
boy in the barber shop, I mean. The rubber ball he 
never gave up even in his sleep. We love our toys in 
this life. And why not? It is an implanted instinct, 
natural as it is for one to love the beautiful in nature. 
It is one of the God-given elements of humanity, the 
love of toys. And happy is the person who never over- 
comes the love for them and never gives over the habit 
of playing with the harmless toys of life. What more 
pitiful than to see the person who has forgotten how 
to play. Men and women whom the world has caught 
in the tumult out of doors and who cannot find, in na- 
ture, in books, in travel, in golf, in harmless pursuits 
and cheerful avocations the relief from the vocation 
that has been engrossing them are to be pitied, indeed. 

Rest, peace, comfort, contentment — to what else do 
we aspire, when we have done our bit as men and 
women. Without consciousness of having played our 
part as true soldiers of life, we can have no comfort, 
no contentment. The measure of service should be the 
measure of our rest and our play. The amount we 
have done for fellow-man, in sacrifice, toil, duty, is the 
amount we shall receive. May we do it, like men and 
women, and sink to sleep, like the little child in the 
chair before me, in peace, our toys close clenched in 
our hands! 




ON "THE CAVERN OF THE SNAIL" 

OWN by the side of the sea the other day, when 
all the way across to Europe went the long 
green waves breaking upon the shore, finally, 
at my feet, I saw a cleft in the rocks into 
which the sea bubbled now and then in yeast- 
like foam. 
Its sides were hung in seaweed, festooned and 
drooping like curtains, and its base was smooth rocks 
and two or three bowlders. On the flat rock was the 
snail, fixed to the rock, alive of course, sentient maybe, 
with a life to live and a destiny to fulfill. 

It occurred to me to translate myself into the terms 
of the snail, fixed to this rock, his world foreordained, 
limited, unchangeable! What may be its under- 
standing of life? What may be its appreciation of the 
cosmos ? 

The snail's cavern is open six hours to the sun, the 
sky, the rains, the snows, the ice, the cold, the summer 
heat. Six hours follow in which the sea comes raging 
over it, first in waves, then in slow moving silence of 
a fathom deep. It has night and day, the stars shine 
on, the moon bathes it, the sun warms it. But never 
any prospect save the four walls of the cavern with 
its festoons of green seaweed, dull and dry or waving 
in the seas. It is far down in the bottom of the well. 
It is bounded by precipices which are as seven hundred 
feet are to us, and yet perhaps not ten feet high. It 
is there, in its world of perhaps sixty square feet. 
Poor circumscribed snail ! And yet, no doubt, if it has 
any comprehension of the life of the snail, very busy, 



182 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

very content, very full of wonder about its sur- 
roundings. 

Something in that dark career of the snail made 
me think about ourselves and our caverns and our 
sense of appreciation of vi^hat is outside our outlook. 
Is it so very much less circumscribed than that of the 
snail in the cleft in the rocks with its draperies of sea- 
weed ? We occupy a world which is but a speck in the 
universe. We live briefly and our names and our 
graves pass into oblivion. Out of the millions on earth 
today not many will be remembered in a hundred years, 
only one or two in a thousand years. We are sur- 
rounded by stars which we never notice and over us 
roll suns and constellations of suns which make our 
own "snail's" cavern dark and narrow, indeed. We 
move within a limit which as to space is not so great 
as that of the snail as compared to earth. The limit 
of our sight, our hearing and our senses of smell and 
touch is so circumscribed that the eagle, the lobster 
and the hound each surpasses us. We cannot live in 
the water like the snail nor fly like the seagull. 

Around us is a universe full of wonders. Beyond 
our sea of life, the atmosphere which is as truly a sea 
as that which surrounds the fish that swims, lie spaces 
infinite, untraveled, like those outside the twelve-foot 
space to which the snail itself is fixed immovable. We 
look up at it and see it and cannot reach it. It may be 
full of life. We know that it is full of action, etheric, 
molecular, electric, as surely as is the land above the 
dark abode of the snail. There may be sentient life 
there looking down on us transfixed here in our little 
world. Our scientists say that this cannot be. The 
snail may say the same. We know only so far as we 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 183 

reason for ourselves, our method of sustaining life, our 
capacity to breathe and see and smell and taste. But 
the snail does not reason that way — if at all. He 
knows nothing of creatures that walk or have lungs 
and vocal organs ! 

If my speculations on the cavern of the snail lead 
me anywhere it is back to the spiritual. Whatever we 
are, are we not by virtue of our imagination and our 
dreams, in the line of the progressive development of 
the spirit which is the solution of the mystery? Is not 
THAT the thing to endure and to live and to go on 
and on? Is not this thing that impels my pen and 
makes me speculate on the destiny of the snail and of 
me, the thing that opens the cavern of the snail and 
of me ? Vain the predications of man, vain all his cat- 
egories touching life! He knows nothing because he 
reasons from his cavern! It is only when he dreams 
beyond it, when his spirit soars, when his intellect rides 
on the wings thereof that he breaks the barrier and 
touches the hem of the garments of God. 




ON "FALL PICKLING" 

AM forced to consider this topic by the in- 
sistent demands of persons who have noses. 
They smell spices all along the way from 
home to shop and they telephone or come 
ambling in here with kindest of intent 
and remark diffidently that they have "a 
subject for a just talk." 

I have no nose — at certain seasons. Rag-weed time 
and fall dandelion season diminishes its efficiency, 
although it does not diminish its activity, or its size. 
So, I may say that I am the more obliged to those 
who smell for me. 

From kitchens along the way, even those shut off 
from view by high hedges, there come stealing — so I 
am informed — subtle odors that suggest autumn, in 
New England, and have suggested other autumns from 
the days of Plymouth Colony. O! The pickles that 
New England has made; the New Englanders that 
have been pickled and still are being pickled by the 
consumption of the puckery juices of vinegar and sugar 
and spices. 

I suppose that the cucumber is the proudest prod- 
uct of the astringent art, when properly cured in the 
acetic. You can't beat a small pickling cuke, except 
by a small pickling onion, and by a small pickling to- 
mato, and by a small pickling pear, and by a small 
pickling plum and by a small pickling quince, and if I 
have left out any, it is because I have lost my cook 
book. When the air of a housewife's kitchen is prop- 
erly charged with the aroma of the mingled fruit of 
vine and cane I rather weep there than at the movies — 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 185 

even though it be a Connie Talmadge six-reeler. You 
know — there is no bliss like mouth-watering. I am 
going to write about mouth-watering some day as a 
question of the anticipatory delights in the human 
psycho-physiology. There is a subtle subject for any- 
one, properly handled — what makes the mouth water? 
Is the appetite an ascendency over the mind or the 
mind an ascendency over the appetite? 

I am informed by one man that over thirty miles of 
cucumbers placed end to end will be pickled in this 
town this fall. Placed in a double row they would 
reach twice as far. Placed in a circle and they would 
take in a territory the size of the recent Republican ma- 
jority in Maine. Picalily is the favorite beverage of 
Maine pickle-eaters. I do not know as that is the way 
to spell it. There are some people who will rise from 
a sick bed and eat picalily. It is made of something — 
I know not what. It smells as though the gods had a 
hand in it and the Queen of Sheba brought the spices 
when she came to view the wonders of King Solomon. 

In the old days, there was a lot of activity on pick- 
ling day — just the same as there was on the day when 
we cut up the pig. I have sliced green tomatoes in 
days gone by until my fingers were all crinkled up with 
tomato juice like the fringe on an aged curtain. When 
we pickled, Mrs. Quint came over from the next house 
and Tryphosa Rideout and Cleora Carr, and said: 
"Land sakes, you pickHn'." And they tasted for ma. 
Ma had tasted and tasted until "Mercy Me !" she had no 
taste left ; everything tasted alike. And I had tasted and 
tasted until I had a pain in my stomach. And father 
had tasted and tasted until he was full of quince, 
and tomato, and plum, and cucumber, and ketchup, and 



186 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

chili sauce, and sweet pickles, and pickled melon rind, 
and pickled grape, and pickled citron, and pickling 
pumpkin, and pickled prickly pears that Peter Piper 
picked. 

Now Tryphosa ! DON'T you think that the picalily 
would be better if it had a little more sugar in it?" 
And yet all agreed that to touch it again, so much as 
to lay a finger on it, would be to mar the finest picalily 
ever produced since Eve put up apples. Surely Try- 
phosa never suggested a change. And Tryphosa who 
was unmarried, carried home much of the treasure of 
the kitchen when she wended her way to her lonely 
domicile. O, thrift ! thy name is preserving and pick- 
ling! Will it ever pass away as a happy custom? I 
hope not, for then we shall be a dying race. The Lord 
preserve us! The Lord pickle us, if need be. Boaz 
courted Ruth with vinegar. He did not offer her 
sweets, and ice cream ! He asked her to sit beside him 
in the field. "Come hither," said he, "and sit beside 
me at meal time and eat of the bread and dip thy mor- 
sel in the vinegar." 

This pickling is old in custom. Its fragrance hath 
not departed. Amid all of the turmoil of the times, 
amid the contentions of war and wage, these simple 
things will yet call us back to home and mother. 




ON "WOODLAND POOLS" 

ARCUS AURELIUS draws lessons from the 
bubbling spring that makes the pool in the 
woods. It is clear and sweet — as are some 
human souls running away to do good; 
sweetening the earth around it; making 
blossoms to grow in the pathway. The stag- 
nant pool is covered with scum and infested with evil. 
So are stagnant souls. Enough said. 

To me, with head pillowed on a stone, nothing is so 
fair as glimpses of water through trees, intervening 
trunks, waving tops, grassy land intervening all rolled 
out smooth or left in the rough just as Nature pleases. 
I find no landscape exactly to my liking unless it has 
the gleam in it. 

Wandering through woods, to come on a clear pond, 
smiling to you up out of its loneliness all there all 
ready to be loved and laved in, is to find a blessing. I 
have had such experiences lately and if I could only 
tell of the emotional stir that they give to me, I would 
be a poet indeed. I have in mind one from a cabin 
door. It is reached by a winding water-way beyond a 
dam and herein the wild duck comes to idle, the musk- 
rat to swim slyly, and in its surface I have seen otter 
and once a beaver — I swear it. 

That was a triumph. The hardback trims the 
edges of the brook that leads into this woodland pool. 
It grows out far into the water, and around it swerves 
the current as you have seen it in many a pond en- 
trance. I can push my boat stilly into this brook and 
never make a ripple. The fireweed dyes it ; the pines 
bend over it ; a mountain shades it ; an eagle soars over 



188 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

it ; a wind kisses it ; a wave sings to it ; a cloud swims 
in it. I saw the beaver — I did, I did. He swam to- 
ward me all unconscious and in an instant he was gone 
and I was breathless. All I could hear was the king- 
bird chattering like a "stout-chested swallow" and the 
frog by the shore "like the tap of a drum when the 
human legions are gathering." 

I do not know anything finer than to stumble upon, 
thus to surprise a living wild thing in the woods, or 
in the waters. These ponds are their terrain — ^these 
waters their castle, and nobody is expected to visit un- 
invited. And so this beaver was stubbing along pound- 
ing the water and possibly going on an errand to a 
beaver-shop when I disturbed him. O ! the joy of the 
inland pool. 

I love their shores serrated and often sedgy, their 
islands (perhaps I am roaming into real ponds but let's 
roam) so useless except for birds and ducks and in- 
sects and scenery ; their moods so abrupt ; their glories 
so reflective. I have seen my inland pool, a pond if 
you like, come to a feathery fury in a moment and 
then smile at you again through tears of rain, with a 
rainbow in the eastern sky arching the mountain top. 
I have lain in a boat over the side thereof and seen all 
of the color of sky and hill, of autumn and of sunset 
and empurpling deeps of the velvet afterglow, live in 
its bosom, and all of the while the inland pool seems to 
say: "I am clean and pure, how are you?" 

I wish that everyone in the world could come to 
Maine in October and rest on the bosom of such glory. 
There would be so much less unrest; so much better 
appreciation of what is really worth while. I wish that 
we could take you all out of stuffy cities, out of cab- 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 189 

arets, out of theatres, out of cellars, out of palaces, and 
introduce you to the inland waters of Maine. I wish 
we could have the winds off our mountains and the 
sweet breath off the waters at your feet blow the fogs 
and mists out of your brains that you might see the 
clearer the true values of this life. I would rather be 
a hermit in a cabin by the shore of living waters than 
a billionaire in a city block condemned forever to the 
desk. I could not live without finding in the hills and 
by the stream and on the lake and in the deep green 
silences of the inland pool the religion of my worship. 
Let the rain descend ; the sun burn, the winds blow ! 
What matter it? Here are the temples of the Most 
High. The winter comes here by my inland pool early 
and yet so sweetly, in tiny tickings against bare trees ; 
in snowflakes falling into still waters ; in the earth cov- 
ering of white in the night. The chicadee stirs by the 
cabin door, the partridge rustles through the thicket. 
Yet the same stars come out at eventide; the same 
moon shines in the night and the same Plan deals with 
the inland pool, as with my soul. 



ON "AMIABILITY AT HOME 



99 




SUALLY, husband and wife start out with ev- 
erything that should go to make up a picnic. 
They have a tent over their heads, bread and 
meat and everything fine in their hamper. 
But often they fail to put into the basket, a 
touch of that divine salt, known as amiability. 
Mr. Greeter and Mrs. Greeter — none could be 
sweeter! He runs a shop and is amiable as a basket 
of chips when you see him behind the counter. His 
benevolent face fairly beams as you go in to buy his 
goods. He ripples with tales and runs over with 
stories. He is what is called "an ever genial." The 
village newspaper so says, and so saying it must be 
true. Mrs. Greeter goes out to the meetings of the 
village sewing circle and is the life of the party. 

But at home ! Oh boy ! Greeter has worn out his 
N amiability at the store and Mrs. Greeter has worn out 

hers at the club. The pinch of the "divine salt" is ev- 
erywhere but in the home-basket. He begins to glower 
as soon as he locks up the shop. She begins to "hate 
things" as soon as she unloosens her corsets. He be- 
gins to "taste bitter" as soon as he smells the supper. 
She begins to look like a dill pickle as soon as he says 
"boo !" He has a gift of sarcasm ; she has a gift of 
repartee. He has a power of suggestion and she has a 
power of seeing the same. He has the art of silence 
"that speaks louder than words;" she has the power 
of words that makes silence seem like heaven. He can 
say things in a look and she can look things by saying 
them. They have a nice picnic-basket — everything in 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 191 

it from soup to dessert and not a pinch of the stuff that 
gives it savor — amiability. 

There are a good many people who are this way. 
I believe that this writing will touch more than one of 
my readers where he lives. And it is too bad. It is 
only a habit and nothing intentional. It would be well 
if we had schools of amiable domestic science where 
husbands and wives could be taught the manner of 
peaceful household life. Amiability is a habit. Un- 
amiability is a habit. We are not so different from 
some of the lower animals — the dog, for instance. A 
dog may be easily ruined in disposition by not being 
properly educated in being .good-natured. He may get 
to be so bad that he will not even waggle his tail. Some 
people equally refuse to waggle. 

Of course, I know that sermonizing is a foolish 
habit also. I can go about telling people that they all 
should be amiable at home as they are capable of being 
in business. Will they? They will not. But maybe 
some person may feel that if he and his wife and the 
children could somehow get a sort of understanding; 
form an Amalgamated Union of Amiables, it surely 
would add to the joy of living. The home would be as 
pleasant as the club for that man and that woman and 
the children might get a pinch of the enduring "divine 
savor" of life. 

Of course an amiable man is happy. You can't deny 
that. If a man is not amiable, he is not happy. If he 
is an "abused party," he is not happy. If he is cross 
about something all of the time, he is not happy. If 
one-half of him is not amiable, he is not happy. If that 
half is the "better half" so much the worse and yet, 
again, so much the worse also if the wife be amiable and 



192 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

the husband be the reverse. You must "pass the salt." 
You must have a well-savored household to be happy. 
Sometimes one saint in a household will savor it. I 
have known a household where the people were ordi- 
narily very "touchy" and far from amiable as to dis- 
position, but all of them savored by a white-haired 
saintly woman who never spoke except as in kindness 
and in a low, sweet voice, and who lived as she spoke. 
Thus what one puts in the hamper does do some good, 
if all will partake of it. 

But 0! my! What is the use of having a home 
where there is nothing but eternal squabbling; where 
no one ever waggles; where no one laughs and loves 
and lives the life of sunshine. What is the use of a 
household where there is plenty of bread and cheese 
and no kisses. What is the use of wasting all one's 
smiles on the customer and none on the partner? Ste- 
venson called his happiness "a great task." But he did 
it, in spite of his illness. "If I have faltered," wrote 
he, "in my great task of happiness; if I have moved 
among my race and shown no glorious morning face; 
if beams from happy human eyes have moved me not ; 
if morning skies, books and my food and summer rain 
have knocked at my sullen heart in vain, Lord, thy 
most pointed pleasure take and stab my spirit broad 
awake." 




ON "A WOMAN HANGING OUT 
THE CLOTHES" 

WOMAN is hanging out the Monday's 
washing at the house just across the lawn at 
the summer cottage and she stands erect with 
the wind blowing her skirts. 

"A good, old-fashioned New England pic- 
ture," says my neighbor on the other veranda. 
She has clothespins in her mouth and she stops now 
and then to look at the sea and the sky. 

There is a cow tied to a rope with a stake driven 
in the ground, giving her a limited range for feeding. 
The cow has a broad white belt, made by nature, around 
her girth, but her forequarters, feet, rump and tail are 
shiny coal black — a picturesque cow, if I do say it, and 
worth $50 additional to the rent of this cottage, merely 
because of the white-belted aristocracy that she implies. 
It is noon. Everyone is at dinner — New England 
style — and it is as still as the desert. There is a sort 
of common or public field out in front of our veranda 
and this is without life except the cow-, who bends 
munching into the grass. You may, perhaps, hear 
insistent voices of folk at their noon-day tables, or 
occasionally the voice of a child, unseen. 

There is a soft south wind lazily moving the pistils 
of the flowers and the fronds of the firs. Birds are 
cheerfully doing a bit of noon-day chirping; but birds 
do not sing at noon as at dawn. Swallows flit over the 
field and soft sighs are in the spruces. 

The woman hanging out clothes stirs memories 
enough to fill a book. Something in her attitude must 
have stirred my neighbor to his thought. I wonder 



194 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

what made him silent for so long a time, unless his 
thoughts went back to old times and old memories. 
And it is all in the way you see things. We see sights 
not with the eyes and hear sounds not with the ears. 
"Between the tree of the clown and the tree of Milton 
or of Shakespeare, what a difference," says Leigh Hunt, 
"and between the plodding walk of the sexton over the 
lea and that of Gray, what a difference. What a differ- 
ence between the Bermudas of the shipbuilder and the 
Bermoothes of Shakespeare ; the isle full of noises and 
sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not; the isle of 
elves and fairies, that chased the tide to and fro on the 
seashore; of Calaban and Ariel, of Miranda and Fer- 
dinand." 

The common meadow is a sorry thing to a ditcher, 
but to the neighbor who sees my cow and the woman 
hanging out the clothes erect, with the wind blowing 
her hair and her skirts, it has a romance that weaves 
into fancy of old New England. 

Probably he sees an old house into which he could 
go today after forty years have passed and walk 
through it in the dark or with closed eyes and make 
every turn, and take every hidden step, and go direct 
to the old water-pail for a cooling drink. Probably he 
hiears the washboard rattle and the churn go, and the 
clothes wringer creak and smells the suds. Probably 
he connects with it Christian virtues, sober surround- 
ings, good counsel, long lives, peaceful deaths, patient 
hands folded over tired bosoms. He hears church- 
bells ring and sees summer blossoms turning to golden- 
rod, and frosts and snows and piling drifts and sobbing 
eaves and snapping fires and evening lamps and drifted 
yards and everywhere thru it a woman hanging out the 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 196 

clothes, clothespins in her mouth, her skirts blowing 
in the wind, wisps of her hair under her shawl in win- 
ter, under her cap in summer. 

I have only shut my eyes this day and talked this 
to a stenographer and it has all come to me, simply 
enough as a matter of fact. Leigh Hunt again says in 
that wonderful little familiar essay of his on "The 
Realities of the Imagination" : "Its verdures, sheep, 
its hedge-row elms, all else which sight and sound can 
give, are made to furnish a treasure of pleasant 
thoughts." 




ON "THE CLAM" 

HE Latin name of the clam is Mya, which is 
possibly a corruption of "more," one of the 
attributes of the clam. The name clam 
comes from "clamp" which is a derivation of 
"clamma," meaning a narrow pass. If you 
have sufficient imagination, you may figure 
out the derivation from these terms. I should hate to 
meet a clam in a narrow pass with the villain still pur- 
suing. I should be afraid of delay, in case the clam 
were in a stew. 

Further to pursue the clam thru the narrow pass 
to its ultimate etymology, permit me to add that its 
complete name is mya arenaria, speaking of the Sacca- 
rappa clam, and Venus Mercenaria for the hard clam 
or the quahog. Why they should ever call a hard clam 
a mercenary Venus, beats me. Mercenary Venuses 
have served me with "little necks" on the half shell 
before this, but who was the clam and who was the 
Venus, is a matter of record and I am not compelled 
to incriminate myself. 



196 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

A young hard clam is a little neck and an old hard 
clam is a rough neck. There are two kinds of clams — 
hard clams and soft clams — just like corns and bun- 
ions, if you will excuse me for the analogy. The hard 
clam is called a clam in New York and a quahog in 
Boston, and, as usual, Boston is correct. The Boston 
"clam" is soft. The Maine clam is Bostonese in cul- 
ture, in resilience and in flavor, intensified by the cli- 
mate as is everything toothsome in Maine. Mud clams 
are a poor relation of sand-clams. A sand-clam is as 
white as the driven snow and as small as an old- 
fashioned pay-envelope. You rake in a hard clam but 
you have to dig for a soft clam. Of course it is 
absurd to call a Maine clam "soft," because he is about 
as hard to get nowadays as a dish of real prunes. The 
residue of hard clams is scallops; the residue of soft 
clams is a dreamy feeling about the wesband and a 
decision to have some more tomorrow, only to have 
them fried. 

"The Mya has a comparatively thin, smooth, elon- 
gated shell, a protusile, blade-like foot useful in dig- 
ging, and siphons that may be longer than the shell." 
I find this description in the encyclopedia and credit 
it — only what I thought was the clam's head seems to 
be his foot. It was so once when I went to call on a 
girl, whom I knew. I met her father at the door and 
what I thought was her dad's head proved to be his 
foot. Chicago people who have never before seen a 
Maine soft clam eat their feet. I mean the clam's feet, 
Chicago is strong on feet. I went to New Meadows 
Inn once with a Chicago friend and I had to drag him 
away from the table — he persisted in chewing the 
clam's feet the way one chews gum. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 197 

The clam is a silent animal and has won a reputa- 
tion for keeping its mouth shut, that surpasses that of 
some politicians. I never knew why the clam got such 
a reputation; for, left to himself, he opens up widely 
without much of any urging. When I was a boy we 
used to get a half bushel of clams for ten cents or so 
and used to feed them a pint of corn meal. The clams 
would then begin to sing in a clamorous way and 
would run their heads (I mean their feet) out, worse 
than a seashore girl with a new pair of silk hose. 
I have seen clams with a jag of corn meal elongate 
their feet several feet, collectively. The corn meal 
made the clams sweet; removed the grit; plumped 
them up, and you averaged to get about five pounds 
more of clam, and the clams died happy. 

Old Uncle Hodgdon of my town was the most per- 
sistent clam-digger that I ever saw and he knew more 
about clams in a sympathetic way, than any other man 
I ever knew. He used to say that the clam was in 
reality a very sensitive and wise creature and he could 
tell the weather by the way the clams sang when he 
dug them. But then Uncle Hodgdon was selling 
clams — with accent on the selling — throwing in the 
music. He died standing on the clam-flats looking off 
to sea with a clam in his hand. All of which is a di- 
gression merely to fill space. I have dissected clams in 
college and found them messy. My zoological research 
ended with the clam, but I have kept it up in a gusta- 
tory way more or less ever since, and am willing to 
declare that the soft-clam is the finest flavor indigen- 
ous to the United States of America, barring none. I 
fancy that the truth of this broke on Uncle Hodgdon 
and killed him. 




198 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

The moral is that we do not often appreciate the 
things that we have at hand — the blueberry, the clam, 
the string bean, the baked "yaller-eye," New England 
brown-bread, Injun pudding, stewed bean soup, salt- 
cod and pork scraps, tongues and sounds, salt mackerel, 
bannock, flapjacks, — why continue. I shall have you 
all drooling. 

ON "SAND" 

NE time, years ago, we came down out of the 
town of Silverton, Colorado, by the way of 
the Los Animas canyon. It was at sunset 
and the peaks of the "Needles" were bathed 
in the red glow of the sun. These peaks are 
well named. They rise far into the sky, and 
are as sharp as the name that has been given them. 
In our party was a geologist. He looked long at them 
and said, "We call that hungry granite." What a fine 
characterization ! Granite as sharp as teeth — ^hungry, 
literally, for the flesh and bone of the adventurer. 

The other day, on Katahdin, the granite lay in 
strange groupings over the mountain tops. Not "hun- 
gry" but well-fed looking granite, huge obelisks of 
nature, prone. Hundreds of thousands of them lay 
scattered about, as tho some giant had flung them there 
in disorder. On Abol plateau, five or six miles square 
and up four thousand feet, these giant sarcophagi lay 
among the caribou moss and amid the alpine blue- 
berries with a weird suggestiveness of tombs. They 
were enormous of size in many cases, often forty or 
fifty feet long, and scooped out on the top as tho by the 
ice-storms and the glaciers. And then, from there to 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 199 

the peak, nothing but these wonderful blocks of granite 
piled criss-cross, literally making mountains. 

Down the "slide" from Abol to the base is another 
step in the process; loose stones made of these same 
granite blocks, disintegrated by the floods, split by the 
frosts, torn away from the mountain side, perhaps with 
a noise of thunder dashing to pieces as they fall. No 
one can tell the thunder of the tearing apart of this 
mountain in the winter and the spring. It must make 
a chorus to the very gods. And beneath these loose 
stones is a coarse, granitic sand, fragments as big as 
peas, and small as mustard seed, and so sharp and cut- 
ting as to tear the feet and the gloves. It crunches 
under foot like frosty snow in midwinter. It rolls 
away beneath the feet like the lava dust of Mt. 
Vesuvius. 

The farther down the slide you go, in your return 
from the mountain, the finer the sands become. There 
is a "Sandy Stream" where the sands are reasonably fine 
and white and where the shores are sprayed into little 
beaches. And so on down the Wissatiquoick, swift run- 
ning stream, is sand; and in the reaches of the East 
Branch of the Penobscot into which the Wissatiquoik 
empties is this sand. And in the eddies by the little camp 
where we stopped at Lunkasoo is sand, and so on, I 
doubt not, to the greater Penobscot river and the sea 
and the infinite oceans flows this sand, — silt, soil, dis- 
integrated mountain. 

And so the other day as we sat by the sea and let 
the whitest of white sand filter thru the fingers, fine 
enough for the hour-glass that marks the passing of 
the years, I was asked by a lady, who sometimes reads 
these things, "What could you write about sand?" 
And I said, "Not much; but the wise man could write 



200 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

And I said, "Not much ; but the wise man could write 
the story of the mountains, the sea and the soil. God 
talked much about it. It was on His lips when He 
promised Abram to make his a great nation. Isaiah 
discussed it. The Psalms are full of it. The Synoptic 
gospels use it as a simile. Jesus talked often of it. 
His foot pressed it on Galilee. The man who builds his 
house on it shall not prevail." And more to the same 
purport. 

Sand is substance with the dirt washed out of it, 
the weaker things eroded, the resistant quartz, mica, 
feldspar, magnetite left in it. Storms beat about life ; 
about man ; about social systems, and they fall and run 
away ; but the sand remains. It runs its course ; finds 
its level; and while the democracies fall, and nations 
pass, and civilizations run their courses as the moun- 
tains are leveled and the elements tear apart their fibre, 
there remains the sand. And what of the sand? It 
makes the greater part of our soil. It builds our fer- 
tile land. It lays our roads of commerce. It resolves 
into wheat and corn and bread for man. It feeds life. 
It is the residium of human development. 

I sit idly, therefore, and let this sand run thru my 
fingers. Little children play in it and build it into 
dams. But all the while, as the lady has set me think- 
ing, I see the inequalities of life, the cruel tips of the 
needles; the wrongs of society; the hunger and the 
sorrow, all being leveled as the mountains to make the 
soil of our own regeneration. If you miss the applica- 
tion you discredit Progress as the law of life! For 
saith the Psalmist, "Thy Righteousness, O God, is like 
the great mountains. Thy judgments are a great deep. 
O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast." 




ON 
"FORMING ONE'S PERSONALITY" 

f^ OBODY can tell — perhaps it is fortunate — 
what has gone into forming his personality, 
for if he could he would be wasting his time 
in hunting for similar influences for his off- 
spring; for every man, deep in his ego, has a 
notion that his son should grow up like him- 
self and his daughter like her mother. We hunt the 
receptacles of our beings as one hunts over an old trunk 
in which he has kept his mementoes of the past. We 
find in it trifles that have impelled us to do this thing 
or that — a chance word, a turning down this road some 
summer day instead of down the other road; a good 
teacher in the winter term of school instead of a bad 
teacher. They are all purely accidental, as it seems, 
and little to be explained unless we accept the creed 
of the fatalist and believe that our lives are ordained 
along certain pathways. Of two boys, one summer day, 
long ago, who stood by the side of an idle saw-mill 
deciding how to start up the machinery and see the 
wheels go around, both wanted to be the sawyer on the 
log. They drew lots and one of them, after they had 
laboriously opened the gates and started up the old, 
up-and-down saw, stepped to his place. He slipped 
and the saw cut a cruel gash in his hip. He has since 
been a cripple. I see him every day or two on these 
streets. Had the other boy drawn the coveted chance, 
would he have been the cripple for life? 

But of all of the influences, outside the home and 
these strange intrusions of fate, the teacher has the 



202 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

most influence. A newspaper man once said to me: 
"My first spur to ambition to win was in a prize offered 
in school when I was seven. I won it ; for scholarship. 
It was a single-bladed Jonathan Crookes jack-knife. 
I had never owned a jack-knife. Parents had no 
money, in those days, for luxuries for children. If 
you got a jack-knife you earned it. A few days later 
a barefoot boy went berrying with his jack-knife in his 
little pants pocket, every few moments taken out and 
looked over and rubbed bright with loving fingers. On 
his way home, after a seeming momentary thoughtless- 
ness of the knife, the pocket felt empty and the boy- 
heart stood still. There was a tiny hole in the pocket. 
The knife had gone. It never was found. The grief 
was greater than any that seemingly ever has come to 
me. The influence was double — aspiration to get 
somewhere if possible in life; overcoming of griefs 
over loss of material things. 

"The first book that ever suggested the desire to 
write anything," continued the man, "was Washington 
Irving's 'Sketch Book.' It seemed as tho here was 
something that perhaps I could imitate. And then 
Knickerbocker's History of New York, and then in 
swift succession 'Roughing It' and 'Innocents Abroad.' 
We happened to have in the school a library of about a 
thousand volumes, well selected and full of valuable 
literary suggestion. Among others we had a series of 
books on English literary men. We had also James T. 
Field's most delightful reminiscences of authors. This 
had the most potent influence on many boys. We all 
'took out' books every Saturday and the post of libra- 
rian was most envious. I got to be librarian and could, 
of course, go to the book-cases, take the key from my 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 203 

pocket and with almost bursting pride take from the 
library any book I desired. I read nearly every one 
of them in two years. Two books a day was nothing 
for me to take home and run over or else read them as 
I pleased. We had a number of old books given to us 
for the library. Winter vacations we used to go to 
the school-house and catalogue them. What fun we 
had by the warm fire in the school-house, with the old 
books piled around us and we three or four boys read- 
ing or numbering or pasting in labels or happily lying 
on the pile of books by the stove hearing someone read. 
It was better than poolrooms. 

"A teacher had a great influence in determining 
my bent for the newspaper life. He found me indus- 
triously reading newspapers and books and he called 
me to his home one evening when I was in the High 
School and asked me what I was going to try and make 
of myself in life. I knew as little as most boys of 
fifteen. He said: 'If I were you I would try to be a 
newspaper editor.* The seed was implanted, then and 
there. Horace Greeley was nowhere, in comparison 
with my ideals. From then on, I never had any idea 
of being anything else and never have had any other 
idea since." 

The influence upon a boy through reading and his 
teacher is very great. Parents cannot absolutely con- 
trol the reading by children but they can direct it, by 
means of talks and inquiry. You cannot find a great 
author who has not been influenced by some great book. 
The intimacy of the old country school was its greatest 
asset. The great number of students in modern uni- 
versities is their greatest liability. No student gets 
the intimate touch with the teacher, where the class 




204 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

numbers a thousand. When I went to college we had 
only 130 students in the four classes. We are riding 
the waters of life's stream like leaves on a mountain 
brook. Fortunate are we if we find a peaceful eddy 
and have sunshine of good influences playing upon our 
way. 

ON "GRANNIE" 

HEY tell me that there is a new-fangled 
grandma abroad who objects to being called 
"grannie" and asks politely to be called 
"nanna," "sweetie," "pittygamma," anything 
but grammar or alphabetagamma. 

One of the blessings of the war was the 
interruption of the grandmother in unmaidenly pur- 
suits. When the war broke out in July and August, 
1914 — how swift the years — the grandmother was 
Queen of the Beach and the Whole Thing in the Casino. 
She limned up against an horizon shamefully. She 
looked sixteen behind and sixteenth century in front. 
She studied tango, whango, bango; maxixe, praxixe; 
how to play bridge, look young and dance between the 
eats — all in one evening. She went out with the chick- 
ens and came home with the roosters and never won- 
dered how she could do it. When she wanted to dance 
on the revolving floor of the Broadway cabaret or in 
the casino at the beach, she brushed the Young Things 
out of the way and made for the center of the floor and 
stood waiting with her Finger in her Mouth. Her 
skirts rustled when she walked and she was the Fluffy 
Ruffles of the household. She had all of Grandfather's 
money and could afford lingerie and hosiery that would 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 205 

make angels pine. And she wore 'em and wore 'em 
high. Moving away, slowly undulating with mature 
technique, she fooled some of the lads for the Time- 
Being. When she was not laced too tight she could do 
three turns around the hall and not puff or wince. 
When grandfather was alive, she danced him until his 
Tongue hung out. After he passed on and the period 
of mourning was over, she reserved a table next to the 
Jazz band and sat there expectantly, younger than ever 
and with more lingerie. When certain Young Things 
commonly called granddaughters remonstrated with 
her she said, "He ! He ! I can't help it if I am attract- 
ive." After the war broke out "grannie" was the last 
to leave the Floor and after they had put out the lights 
she sauntered chattily home with the boy-drummer and 
the Head Ban joist. 

I must say that the war sobered off grandmother — 
somewhat. She gradually got so she could go to sleep 
without having a boy play the Cymbals to her; sort of 
smiled and took up knitting again and got her feet out 
of the high-heelers into a pair of knit bed-slippers with 
convenient holes in them and began to think about do- 
mesticity again. She was a real "grannie" after all, 
for the heart of grandmothers is all right wherever 
you find it — whether she ambles up and down the board 
walk with a green parasol and a fine sky-line or 
whether she is hanging out the clothes in the back yard 
with the clothespins in her mouth. 

But there are a few things that "Grannie" must not 
forget. She's "grannie." She is no "cutiecute" ; no ava- 
tar of Salome; as a rule no reincarnated Loie Fuller. 
She inherits a name that is dearer than any other ex- 
cept one, and in some respects that beats even that one. 



206 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

for it signifies two mothers in one. She calls up quaint 
and happy memories and blessed suggestions of super- 
natural kindnesses; for old-fashioned grandmothers 
were not so fussy about diet as are modern mothers 
and they will slip a doughnut to a hungry boy between 
meals sometimes and often they have a little bit of 
change for a lad for the Fourth of July. But when you 
find a grandmother who gets mad when a child calls her 
"grannie" and who wants a milder euphemism for the 
title of a double maternity, the chances are that she is 
an ex-tango-hound and would like the bright lights even 
yet. 

The other day a little boy in Lewiston came over 
to his grandmother's house and had a long talk with 
her about grandmothers. The grandmother who is a 
lady of fixed notions about womanly duties and old- 
fashioned motherliness, related to me the whole of the 
talk — which may make another story some day. After 
it was all over and the little chap picked up his cap and 
started to go, he turned back and said, with a kiss by 
way of emphasis, "Well, anyway. Grannie (reflect- 
ively), you are just grannie; you aren't one of them 
bernanna grannies, are you ?" 




ON "HELPING THE BOY" 

ERE and there you find a man who thinks of 
boys in terms of their potentiality and who 
desires to help them. They are always good 
men and they want boys to grow up to be 
good and useful men. How many men who 
may read this give any thought to boyhood ex- 
cept as it comes within the range of their own families 
and how many ever pay any attention to the deserving, 
needy boy to whom a life, now, would mean a life of 
enlarged usefulness and benefit to society? 

Forty years ago, one summer noon, I stood in front 
of my home watching some boys playing baseball in 
the street. I was through the high school at the age of 
fifteen and wanted to go to college for which I was 
fitted. I saw the fine young son of a wealthy man com- 
ing up the street and envied him; for he was soon to 
enter Harvard. He stopped and we fell into talk and 
he asked me if I were going to college. I begged the 
question and he went along. That night the boy's fa- 
ther asked me to his house and put up a proposition to 
me that I could accept — a very business-like proposition 
that enabled me to keep my self-respect; pay back my 
indebtedness when able and get through college. All 
he did was to give me a lift when I needed it. He lost 
nothing ; I gained everything. I taught school and car- 
ried my meals in my pocket to and from college and 
never noticed that it was observed by anyone ; or if it 
were it operated to no personal discomfiture or any loss 
of friends. It taught me the value of money and the 
value of thoughtfulness toward boys. I never have for- 
gotten it, for a day or an hour, and have done what I 



208 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

could for other boys, in part payment for the other 
boy's thoughtfulness and the kindness of his father. I 
am not saying this in any self-appreciative way. It is 
merely a fact. 

The value of a boy is considerable. The railroads 
pay a fixed sum (in some states of the Union, $10,000) 
for a man whom a railroad has killed in an accident. 
A live boy, saved to a life of usefulness, is worth more 
than a dead man. This is why all sorts of socialized 
endeavor to save boys from vicious ways and direct 
them to ways of human betterment, are commercial 
economy. This is why we go into community work to 
keep boys from the streets. It pays. It adds a factor 
of production; it subtracts a factor of expense, when 
we convert a person who might be a criminal liability 
into a productive asset. It adds something else than 
material value; it adds to the well-spring of idealism 
and religious and ethical impulse which must underly 
the city or the state, if it is to be a good city or a good 
state. 

This writing was suggested by Dr. Stephens's little 
story in the Youth's Companion about "The Old 
Squire's Book." No man living in this country has 
done more for boys with his masterly pen than the 
boys' old friend, C. A. Stephens of Norway, Me. Every 
boy who has read the Youth's Companion (and who 
has not?) is indebted to him for clean, sweet reading, 
full of appeal to make sound, honest, helpful men and 
women. Dr. Stephens has been trying to get a copy of 
this Old Squire's Book. He has not succeeded. He 
tells how the old squire happened to write the book 
after he was seventy years of age — and of course 
everyone who has read Dr. Stephens's stories knows all 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 209 

about "The Old Squire" and loves him. It must have 
been a wonderful book — a compendium of all knowl- 
edge entitled "A Book for Boys and Girls." It told all 
about the earth and the heavens, every kind of useful 
information, over 450 pages of fine nonpareil type, 
printed and bound right near the old squire's home. 
The old squire wrote this laboriously, much of it won- 
derfully strong and fine, and issued an edition of 700 
copies. It cost him much money. He read the proof, 
painstakingly, and he drove to the village fifty times at 
least on matters relating to the book. "I do not be- 
lieve that anything equaling it was ever done before or 
ever has been done since," says Dr. Stephens. "It was 
an education, in itself." 

The old squire gave the books away to boys and 
girls. He always took one with him when he rode 
about. If he saw a boy on the road he always asked 
him to ride — this had always been his custom. He was 
six or seven years, giving these books away. They went 
mostly to boys. He had intended to keep three copies 
but he gave these away, the last one to a lame boy. 

The other day a member of Congress on the Pacific 
coast wrote Dr. Stephens asking, in vain it is feared, 
for another copy of the old Squire's book. "I felt 
worse at losing that book than anything else," wrote 
the Congressman. "Seeing the Greek alphabet in that 
book and reading the selection from Xenophon's Anab- 
asis in it, led me to fit for college, * * * One day 
on my way to town to buy firecrackers, the old squire 
asked me to ride. He asked me what I knew about fire- 
crackers and that led him to talk about China and Chi- 
nese. When we got to the store he gave me the book. 
I used to spend hours reading it; but I don't think I 



210 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

ever thought to come to him and thank him for it. I 
suppose the old squire can hardly be alive now ; but if 
he is, I shall be much inclined to come to Maine on pur- 
pose to see him and thank him for that book. I want 
to take his hand and look into his kind face and tell 
him how much I owe to him." 

I think there is nothing more to be said. One bet- 
ter have a monument like this than his name on the 
roster of a nation placed there by self-seeking and by 
wealth. 

ON "SHADOWS" 

HEY come and go and are very beautiful, in 
spite of the simile for which they stand. No 
wall should ever be vexed with designs, for on 
the plainer surface the shadows may come 
and go and make their own unique designs. 
The design of yonder vase with flowers is finer 
in shadow on the wall than any tedious device of the 
shop. 

The shadow that I see is like other valuable things — 
never seen before and never to be seen again. It is 
mine and mine alone and mystically I can possess it — 
the flat one-dimension deft thing that moves along with 
the sun. Though all the room be motionless, it moves 
and has the suggestion of life, in mere design. It is as 
vaguely evanescent as the flight of a humming-bird. 
Why should designs be endowed with half-immortality. 
Song has nothing of fixity. It is sung and has gone and 
it is the loveliest of earthly things. I can lie and watch 
the shadows as creative art, that is made for me and 
me alone. It is as though I heard the voice of the 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 211 

singer in the next room or the song of a thrush at even- 
ing, and I alone heard it. There is selfishness in appre- 
ciation of some things. 

Sometimes shadows return. After winter has gone 
and shadows have departed they suddenly come back 
again as from roaming. Where have they been? 
There is a shadow by my bed, that was there last year 
and has been away. Thus does the vase of flowers play 
its stealthy game of the year. Thus do the sunward 
thoughts of the dreamer fly away and follow the sun 
and come back again. He closes his eyes and sees the 
crocus stirring under the mold and hears the tulip tell 
of "time to get out of bed." Shadows within doors are 
only brothers and sisters of the company of shadows 
out of doors. Gray days damage them, but they are 
creatures of the sunshine and hence are like some birds 
and timid animals that emerge from nowhere only on 
occasions. All of the world is full of them in sunshine 
and you do not see them unless you get into the habit 
of looking for them in sunny days and moonlit nights ; 
and the air and the earth are full of them — atoms of 
shadow composing the very air through which we 
breathe. You have no conception of the enjoyment and 
friendship and company of shadows — so ethereal, 
gentle, retiring and agile as they are. 

Summer time at the seashore, is the field day of 
shadows. The summer sunshine is brighter there and 
the air is clearer and the leaves of the trees sprinkle 
the ground with shadows that are translucent. And 
the big woods — they have sombre and dim shadows; 
shadows that creep along with the sun over mosses and 
over trunks of fallen trees. The loveliness of every 
shadow is that it yet holds light. It is not a dead thing. 



212 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

It glows with the Hght that was. It has mauves, dim 
reds and afterglows. Everyone knows the big shad- 
ows. They enforce themselves like the pageant of a 
great play ; whereas the customary stage setting passes 
as the average of requirement. For instance, we have 
all seen the shadow of the cloud over the distant moun- 
tain, creeping along with apparent slowness yet with 
the speed of light, and shadows that run over mountain 
ponds and shadows that lie on stiH pools and mirrored 
lakes with blues and yellows from sky and hills. All 
of these we know ; but so many do not see the shadow 
of the mid-air falling of twilight; the coming of the 
quiet dusk; the grays and greens and the ashen hues 
that are transfixed for the moment on grasses and be- 
hind stone walls. 

Indoors, out of doors, all hours, moonlight, sun- 
light, starlight — all have shadows. It is significant of 
life and the moral is too obvious for platitude. I am 
talking rather about watching shadows and getting a 
sort of companionship out of them. Night is but a 
shadow, the evening a shadow of another flight of the 
sun. It carries the sun's "clasped shadow," as Alice 
Mejmell says. It is eclipse daily and yet out of shadow 
is reborn as the young child in the mother's arms the 
new day of sunshine and shadow — the one to emphasize 
the other and make it sweet, as pain makes pleasure 
sweet and pleasure makes pain helpful and good for us. 

For, after all, is this not a wonderful world with 
its contrasts of light and shade. The artist seeks his 
shadows almost before he seeks his lights. He plays 
with them. So does the greater Artist, the Creator, 
play with them and we may lie on the grass or in our 
room and watch the fingers of God, as they move and 
make our fairest pictures. 



1 



ON *THE LESSON IN THE 
RAINBOW" 

T IS too bad to monkey with our fairy tales. 
The horse-shoe over the door costs nothing; 
never drives out bad luck, perhaps; can be 
laughed out of court by the realists, but it 
soothes the feeling and does no harm. 

St. Dunstan put it there. This doughty 
old blacksmith tweeked the Devil who came leaning his 
arms on the old saint's window sill, thus concealing his 
tail and his hoofs and undertook to pass an idle sum- 
mer afternoon by talking sweetly to the saint, of treas- 
ures under the rainbow. And the old chap at the forge, 
just simply "fotched" him with his tongs, held the devil 
by the nose and shod his off hoof with a red-hot horse- 
shoe. Hence good luck. The Devil is afraid of horse- 
shoes and would never pass a door where one were on 
guard. So much for horseshoes. 

As to rainbows! Science keeps on butting in our 
fairyland. She is a foolish realist, knowing nothing 
much and trying to rob us of our fourth dimension of 
dreamland. She never seems to realize, with all of her 
realism, that she is thinking with an organ that is 
tinier as to space than a needle point in cosmos. One 
cannot think of God with the mind of a mouse. And 
that is "relativity." The rainbow made Wordsworth's 
heart leap when he was a child and he adds "so be it 
when I grow old, or let me die." But we are fooling 
modern school children out of the rainbow, by telling 
them that it is nothing but light through the prism. 



214 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Keats, in his wrath, cursed Newton for robbing man- 
kind of its wonder in the rainbow. Hath the beauty 
of the rainbow changed? Hath the bow over Noah's 
ark, Hfted to his straining eyes, changed a single pig- 
ment in its glory, even unto tonight? Are we doing 
right by telling school children that it is nothing but 
an interference in the normal function of the vagus 
nerve? Why did the Creator set it in the heavens — 
that someone might stand beneath it and say "pooh; 
I can make a small one just like it with a watering- 
pot?" 

Why! I have a friend who saw a double rainbow, 
in Mt. Katahdin. It was on Monument Peak and this 
rainbow sat in the chasm and it was a complete circle. 
And he was moved to righteousness and has been a 
good man ever since, if he were not before. "And I 
saw an angel come down from heaven and a rainbow 
was on his head ! And his face was as it were the sun ; 
and his feet were as pillars of fire." We watch the 
Northern Lights, pale green, crimson and gold, pul- 
sating like the pinions of a hovering bird, and we won- 
der. We are met by the information of our scientific 
friend that it is an interesting electro-magnetic phe- 
nomenon, and we would hit him with a club. We seek 
the hills and see the golden autumn in the trees — the 
glory of ripening leaves. Our scientific friend tells us 
that it is the breaking up of the green cells into chlor- 
ophyll and xanthrophyll. We would tweak his nose 
like St. Dunstan and nail a horseshoe to the devil's 
hoof. 

Leave us with our toys! Or else go along and tell 
us who made the rain and whence comes the sunlight ; 
and who conceived the cell and who devised the articles 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 216 

that you designate with such long names in the body of 
the little leaf — that, of itself, is such a cause of wonder. 

No one has told us "why." Science tells us of the 
wheels ; but not of the clock-maker. Science tells us of 
the reactions but not of the agent. Science takes no 
stock in purposes. Science tells us only of results. In 
reality, the more science, the more wonder. And won- 
der is nature's primary message to us — the most won- 
derful of all our attributes of celestial suggestion. It 
is the new "cell" of man, given him in advance upon 
animals. The farther we go with science the deeper 
the mystery of everything. It is like walking the dim 
trails of deep woods with the occasional sunlight 
through the branches. Tell me why the worm builds a 
house of gems upon his back to protect himself from 
the predacious fish. Tell me why we should distrust 
any primal emotion, or any agency of aspiration — 
science, philosophy, religion, so be it they minister to 
our love and interpretation of nature. 

So ! We come back and stand under the rainbow — 
exactly in the center of it as John Burroughs so stoutly 
maintains. Its bow was set in the heavens as covenant 
that never again should the earth be destroyed by flood 
or ever again any of the laws should be suspended or 
abrogated. And whenever a cloud shall come over the 
earth and things be dark, the bow shall come and it 
shall be a reminder of the compact between God and 
the earth. 

And that covenant is in the law of the refraction of 
light, in the flush of the skies when the Northern Lights 
waver and rustle through the skies in their golden col- 
ors; when the leaf blushes itself to death; when the 
rock falls from the cliff to the tarn and the seas come 




216 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

up and die away as drawn by the pale horses of the 
moon. In short, it is a part of the covenant that this 
world is run by law and law alone. 



ON "HAIR AND HEADS" 

IT APPEARS that men become bald because 
they do not exert themselves to be otherwise. 
All life secures automatically what it requires 
for business. Arctic animals are white be- 
cause snow and ice are white and animals 
must be white, to hide against the background 
and thus get their prey. Fish in subterranean waters 
lose their eyes because they do not wish for eyes. 

With man it is a sexual affair. In early days when 
women wore fewer clothes — and that was going some — 
their hair was their chief glory. Take Eve, for in- 
stance. If it were not for the hair that flows so abun- 
dantly about Eve, at least in portraiture, we might be 
ashamed of Mamma. The prehistoric ladies had no 
gew-gaws, bright ribbons, high heels, silk hose, peek- 
aboo waists, short sleeves, short skirts — nothing doing 
to mark the line between sight and fancy. So they 
featured the flowing hair. It was done to attract man. 
With the birds and some animals it is different. The 
male has to attract the female and so the males are 
decorated. It is all a matter of wishing and having. 

Some of these who try to explain why men go bald 
and women do not go bald, feel that if men would only 
wish a little harder for abundant tresses, they would 
be able to have and to hold hair, on their heads. They 
even go so far as to say that if men set about wishing 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 217 

continually and feeling the need, for instance, of an- 
other eye in the back of the head, it would grow. It 
might take a million years or so, but it would come. 
The cell that would create this eye, or an extra set of 
ears or a smeller in place of the great toe, would come, 
just as one really required them for safety and prog- 
ress. This cell business is a positively new thought. 
You can explain about anything on the basis of a new 
cell. Think hard ; start a new cell into activity and lo ! 
we have new powers and may see beyond the veil. It 
is a useful thing — this complete sell, I mean cell. 

But that has nothing to do with hair. Women have 
abundant hair because from infancy they consider it 
an essential. A woman never ceases for a moment to 
take care of her hair. She brushes it ; anoints it ; mar- 
celles it; waves it and does it up. It is the "desire" 
that does the trick. It is the same sort of cell-action as 
that which puts the tail on the peacock. It is what 
makes the fine spun gold on the pheasant's wing. If a 
man really had to go in search of a woman he, too, 
would have to do his hair up and put rats under it and 
stick it out over his ears. He would no longer be the 
silver-plated receptacle of inadequate brains that he 
now is. He would not display his solid ivory as now. 
He would be her-suit ! 

Some people say that the cause of the loss of man's 
hair is to be found in wearing of hats. But women 
wear hats, also. They wear them more than men — 
sometimes. If the hat is especially pretty, a woman 
wears it all of the time. There are thousands of bald- 
headed men who do not wear their hats more than an 
hour or so a day. You can't blame it on hats. Some 



218 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

people blame the loss of hair in men to the frequent 
cutting. There may be something in this. The germ 
may thereby find its way more easily to the cuticle of 
the human cocoanut and thereby also the more easily 
permeate the husk. If men let their hair grow without 
cutting it might become long and lovely, who knows. 
It surely would be a great help around the shop. 

This is no new topic. It is even treated scientifi- 
cally. Some folks are congenitally bald and the doc- 
tors with their usual levity call this hypotrichosis con- 
genita. If you are bald before you are fifty, you have 
premature alopecia. If you get bald when you are old 
it is not so bad ; it is only a case of calvitum. All bald- 
ness is due to seborrhoeic eczema. I throw information 
in that you may know profitably that when you begin 
to grow thin and anxious on the top of the head, you 
have a regular latin-trouble. The life of a hair is six 
years. Then it falls. A man sixty years old has, there- 
fore, had ten sets of hair. Interesting, is it not? A 
wholesome person sheds sixty hairs a day. Sixty new 
hairs spring immediately into place and say, "I am 
ready" — even when they are not reddish! 

I am giving you all of this information, gathered 
with great effort, all for the regular price of subscrip- 
tion. I am telling you that if you will start out your 
boys the same as your girls and get them to brush their 
hair every night and morning and never wet it use- 
lessly and do it up in a net nights and never have it 
shingled and have it neatly braided and tied up with a 
red ribbon as they go to school they may have fine long 
hair on their heads all of their lives and may thereby 
become great actors, injun doctors, philosophers and 
poets. And it occurs to me that if we all unite and wish 
real hard we may have hair that we can take off nights 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 219 

and put on days. And it occurs to me that this might 
come in process of time and wishing, to be appreciated 
and estimated in fact and fashion as far superior to 
fixed and immovable hair — the kind that moveth not 
a hair's breadth, and jotteth not a tittle, and that falls 
in sixties, frequently "like sixty." 



ON "A TALK TO CHILDREN 
OF ALL AGES" 

SUPPOSE you know about this animal that I 
propose to make the subject of this natural 
history talk ; but perhaps you have not always 
considered it as closely as you should and it 
will do no harm to take a few moments to look 
at it as it appears to some of those who have 
studied it. 

This animal is very common and very tiny. It is 
of a deep vermilion color and has a quick and darting 
movement. Few other animals are as agile as this one. 
It can turn and twist on itself; dart in and out of its 
cage; bend itself double; stretch itself out of its cage 
and often can rest motionless for hours, in its soft and 
warm bed. I suppose you have seen millions of them ; 
observed them as they eat; watched them as they 
worked; and wondered at their strange ways. 

The home of this animal is in a dark cave. It is 
set about with mounds of almost impassable defence. 
Its door is caged with bars of bone and ivory. It 
emerges when it has work to do and only then. It is 
a lonely animal, only one of them in a cave. 




220 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Every child has one of these animals. It is some- 
times so gentle that the child does not know that it is 
an animal. It can be the sweetest thing in all of the 
world, soft, cooing, purring away or singing to itself. 
It has the most wonderful power of speech. It can 
make almost all of the sounds of nature. It can make 
sounds that no other animal in nature can make. It 
can weave into lullabies the mysteries of sound and can 
follow the impulses of the spirit of the child wherever 
the child may lead it. It is a most obedient animal to 
the will of the child — some of the time, especially so 
long as it is properly disciplined and made to obey. 
When it is taught to be kind and decent, good and affec- 
tionate, tender and considerate, it is a most wonderful 
little animal. It is a perfect pet about the house. 
Everyone loves it. It can win its way into a cosy place 
in anyone's heart. It can sing itself into oceans of 
love. It can make the world about it dance with joy. 
It can whistle and sing and send dancing feet and 
flying curls through the sunshine of any home. There 
is nothing that this little creature cannot do to make 
itself and others happy. It can lead men and women 
to be better fathers and mothers. It can make other 
children happy and joyous. It can influence everything 
about it, even kings and queens and other great and 
influential people. 

But let this animal be taught otherwise; let it be 
led by passion and anger and it is a tiger. It is the 
most dangerous and poisonous thing in the world; it 
can dart out of its cage, and strike to kill. It can upset 
homes; discourage tender and fond parents; destroy 
the most desperate and powerful ways of doing evil 
character ; and spread poison all about its way. It has 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 221 

and venting its spite. It can even carry about envy 
from place to place and leave it where it will grow into 
discord and make people unhappy. It can tell lies — 
one of the easiest things it can do. No other creature 
in the world can tell as many lies as this little animal 
when it is not properly disciplined and led and taught. 
It can tell little half-lies so skilfully that its owner 
sometimes thinks that they are truths. It can also, I 
am ashamed to say, be profane and vulgar and go about 
reeking with filth. It can mock age; laugh at suffer- 
ing; and blaspheme the Most High. It can hurt the 
poor by making mock of their garments and can cry 
"ha! ha!" when it sees others in pain. It can gossip, 
softly and secretly, in whispers, and spread thus its 
awful poison over happy homes. It can be an un- 
grateful little beast. It can be envious. It can be un- 
chivalric. It can be low in its company. It can be as 
wicked an animal as it is possible to think. And yet 
all of the time it is under the complete guidance of its 
owner, if he will but give it proper attention. 

If only children of all ages would consider this little 
obedient animal belonging to themselves and would 
guide it more safely, what a world of trouble would be 
saved. 

The tongue — an unruly member ! Not at all ! The 
most tractable, the most wonderful of all the members ! 
It marks man's supremacy over all nature. It can say 
such wonderful things ! It has such a power over life ! 
It has such a song and such a laugh and such a croon- 
ing. All that it requires is the restraint of the well- 
ordered mind. The teaching of a conscience and the 
little animal will be very good and useful all the while. 




222 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

But left to itself ! Uncared for ! It can destroy peace, 
happiness, business, home, father, mother, brother, 
sister ! It can even make God miserable ! 



ON "RACE SUICIDE" 

E HAVE unquestioned record of Madame Fres- 
cobaldi who was the mother of 52 children. 
She never gave birth to less than three at 
once. I have no record of greater numbers 
simultaneously. Madame Frescobaldi unfor- 
tunately did not write her memoirs. We could 
hardly expect her with a family of fifty-two around her. 
She probably was frequently pressed for time as it was. 
Fancy fifty-two pairs of children's shoes in front of 
the fireplace of a night. Fifty-two pairs of trousers, 
or of dresses or of what not disposed about the place. 
You say that this is long ago. Permit me to call to 
your attention Lucas Saez. He lived in America up to 
1883. He then decided to return to Spain with all of 
his children and children's children. Plainly, Mr. Saez 
desired to make an impression on Spain. He took with 
him, for an excursion as it were, 37 children, his eldest 
son being 70 years old. In turn they had 79 children. 
And in turn these grandchildren had 81 children, mak- 
ing a total to the final generation of 197 children, of 
whom 107 were males. Possibly they had a brass-band, 
a baseball club, and a labor union in the bunch. We 
hope so. Hail to the chief ! 

Of course, if you will accept old records as au- 
thentic, there is Rev. Dr. Erskine of Scotland. He 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 223 

lived in 1760 or thereabout. He was father of 33 chil- 
dren and the mother doing quite well, thank you ! Rev. 
Dr. Erskine never wrote his autobiography. It would 
be well if he could tell us how these children turned out. 
Usually they turn out well. They furnish a sort of com- 
munity of interest and boost each other. They also 
learn sacrifice and patience and the art of surrender. 
They make little Rotary Clubs of their own. They 
live on the plan of profiting by service for others. We 
would like to know about the Erskineses! Too bad 
history is silent. 

Fedor Vassileff of Moscow who died in 1782, was 
the father of 83 children according to the official files 
of the vital statistics department of Russia. His first 
wife contributed to his happiness 67 children at 27 
happy festivals. When Fedor went away to work of 
a morning leaving a family of anywhere from fifteen 
to twenty, we will say — referring to his honeymoon 
days — he never knew what might be the case on his 
return. His wife might have had five or six children 
during his absence. He never knew what was going to 
happen. Let him count them in the morning and unless 
some of them got away during the day, he might have 
another bed-full at sunset. It got to be a habit with 
Fedor. His second wife had eighteen children, just to 
show that she could do it as well as some others and 
when this unusual activity in Fedor's family came to 
the attention of ofl!icials and the Czar pensioned him 
he had, as I have said, 83 children and only two of the 
lot had died. One can appreciate the sigh of relief 
when the news came to Fedor that he was appreci- 
ated — elsev/here. 



224 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

There are a few minor champions, such as David 
Wilson, who died in Indiana in 1850, who was the fa- 
ther of 47 pledges of affection; and Mr. Greenhill of 
Langley, who had 39 and who could not have been the 
person named in the poem, "there is a green hill far 
away," for he must have remained about the house 
most of his time to take care of his flock. Mrs. Vir- 
ginia Neal has been mentioned as a candidate for the 
haul of fame. I have forgotten her record ; but it was 
worthy, something like 38 or 40 little ones, all of whom 
looked "just like father." 

This leads to the consideration of the beauty of the 
life of old-fashioned large families on the farm. It 
was a big family of boys and girls and they had a house 
full of children, a cellar full of grub, a barn full of 
stock and hearts full of general domestic love. The 
mother moved around like a guardian angel. The fa- 
ther was a stern disciplinarian and read the Bible 
nights while he drank cider to keep him awake. He 
taught the boys work, worth, thrift, sacrifice, service. 
Each boy and girl helped the other. One got a job in 
town and brought another and looked after him. They 
became a very influential lot of men and women. I can 
see that family dining-room and living-room of nights 
often in my memories. The big living-room table with 
its lamp in the center, a red table-cloth on it, and around 
it all of the boys and girls studying and ciphering and 
conferring. The division of work was rigid. All was 
run like an army. The influence was fine. The re- 
sults were admirable. The modern way of one child 
ruling the household and envious of all the world be- 
side did not obtain. It is to be commended to the 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 225 

attention of modern life. And when cost of living gets 
back to simpler things and life resumes on the farm, 
we may see a return of the times when each farmer 
supplied his own help. 



ON "CLEARING OFF AFTER 
STORMS" 

HEN the old world is all white in winter and 
the night has sobbed and stormed around the 
eaves, it is pleasant in a country home or in 
some remote place in the woods to arise in the 
dawn and see the first faint beams of the sun 
come streaming in at the snow-decked pane 
and watch the light steal over the hills. 

The snow is piled up in little mountains and foot- 
hills on the sills and all of the paths to the spring or 
the well are leveled even with the snow around it. It 
is always glorious to see the carpet of white stretch 
away into the horizon and it is incomparably fine to 
see the trees burdened with the unaccustomed flakes 
that have swept in upon them in the night but which 
they are built to carry, especially the palmated ever- 
greens that have resistance to vertical pressure built 
into their very beings. Who designed the evergreen 
to carry weight? Who built the pine to live in north- 
land and the spruce to carry itself so proudly wherever 
it may be? 

Some storms have sunlit and smiling clearings and 
some have rough and sullen clearings and some decline 
to clear at all, but hang about scolding and making the 



226 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

world miserable with their rudeness and their irrecon- 
cilability. We have in mind some of those old blus- 
terers, that are just like some people, never willing to 
quit storming. They blow and blow and keep the high 
spots smoky with the clouds of snow and ice. They 
fill the roads as fast as they are cleared. They drive 
the snows into the ditches and wreathe them over the 
stone walls and whirl them across the ponds and build 
terraces in the pastures under the sedate old trees that 
have seen this stormy chap, the north wind, before and 
are not afraid of him. Then the sun is gray and the 
sunsets are wild and the nights are chill and there are 
loud sounds of cracking timbers. I never hear one of 
these nights that I do not think of the story of the 
great frost in "Lorna Doone," when the great trees 
in that country split with the frost and went off in 
thunderous tones in the night. Then I pull the bed- 
clothes to my ears and rest in warmth in safety from 
the cold. 

Nature has a way with her — a mood of the 
seasons. She usually does as she says. If she starts 
out with good-natured storms, she keeps it up and for 
that season, at least, she lives up to the promises. So 
this winter, of 1920-21, all storms have had these pa- 
cific clearings. The sun has come out and it has been 
warm and all of the pageantry of this beautiful world 
has been ours for the asking. We have had dawns of 
soft snows on the trees and fence rails, in which the 
fox-tracks in the snow told all the tales of the joyance 
of the nocturnal animals out in the soft, warm snows 
playing the game of life. We have had dawns in which 
the world seemed all decked up like a wedding-cake, all 
ready for some bride of youth and beauty. We have 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 227 

had dawns in which the world has seemed to be fairly 
rollicking in her glee, sunshining herself like a bed 
of diamonds on the bosom of a princess. She is a real 
lovely old world if she tries to be and she tries some- 
times, especially in a Maine winter. 

God bless us ! How proud we ought to be of Maine 
and New England where we have at least two kinds of 
weather and then some odds and ends that make you 
like the regular kind all the more. How we ought to 
praise the Lord, for these hills that are like all of the 
jewels in the book of the apocalypse. How we ought 
to get about in the dawn and worship the land of snows 
because it is so cold and pure and fair to look upon. 

I could make moral precepts out of this if it were 
worth while — this clearing off so gently and sweetly. 
I could say that in some households it were quite as well 
for husbands and wives who have stormed and howled 
and made confusion like unto the blizzard in the home, 
to call it off after the spell is over, after the areas of 
low-pressure are at an end or moved elsewhere, and 
break all at once into sunshine. It would be almost 
worth the storm. But these households where the 
storm never really clears off, where there are grayness 
and gales and sullen skies and sobbing in the eaves and 
corners, and tears that fall like rain, and cloudy faces, 
and no end of seismic disturbances — these are the 
households wherein the moral of the present winter 
should be made. Let the storms clear off into radi- 
ance and still glory of a better day. 





1 



ON "REFORMING AS A BUSINESS" 

AM for reform — of the other fellow. It is 
the fifth largest industry now organized in 
the United States. It is surpassed only by the 
steel and iron industry, lumbering, beef and 
pork packing and the printing business. If 
it keeps on at its present rate of increase it 
will soon surpass pork-packing. 

When someone discovered the "masses," a few 
years ago, the business took an enormous boom. Hith- 
erto, we had endeavored to deal with neighborhoods, 
communities, vestries, wards and villages. Then the 
masses, toiling and otherwise, were discovered and the 
business of reform began to have a national growth. 
It is now the wonder of the age. We are being re- 
formed by machinery, systems, and schedules. They 
are reforming our manners and our microbes. A per- 
son cannot even have a few harmless germs about him 
without someone knocks at his door and asks him to 
run his tongue out and report on his blood-pressure. 
I don't dare to mention a futile stomach-ache for fear 
of being ordered into a compulsory surgical operation 
for appendicitis. And I like my appendicitical appar- 
atus. I want to retain it. 

But I approve of it — for the other fellow. My mail 
this morning aroused me by inquiring "how many 
times do you bathe per diem ? When do you brush your 
teeth ? Do you approve of the Shepherd Towner bill ?" 
I don't know who pays for this; but it is a fine busi- 
ness for someone. And it will do the masses so much 
good! I am for it, of course. I believe that we can 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 229 

reform the world if we only spend enough money to 
keep the professional reformers at work. Then by de- 
grees when we get them all reforming each other and 
the number grows so that we can suspend all other 
business and attend strictly to reforming, why, dear 
friends, something will happen. I don't know what 
it will be ; but it will be something awfully nice. And 
the only unhappy persons will be the reformers, who 
have nobody left to reform, except themselves. 

I used to think that the better way to go about re- 
form was for each person to begin on himself. But I 
see that I was wrong. We must have several things 
beside that, evidently. We must have an organization 
with headquarters in Washington, New York, Chicago, 
Philadelphia and Pittsburg. We must have a $50,000 
man at the head. It needs a $50,000 man, at least. 
Then we must have literature, a speaking bureau, 
women to canvass and publicity agents. It is a great 
out-door sport. And all of the time I was thinking that 
it was an in-door duty. The next definite step is to 
besiege Congress for one hundred million dollars for a 
department or a bureau of a department at the very 
least and a thousand clerks and a lot of furniture. 
Then the reform begins and after that all we have to 
do to make us feel good about it, is to increase the ap- 
propriations every year and add the expense to the in- 
come tax, to the excess profits tax, and to the tax on 
hats, neckties, pills and purgatives. It is just as easy 
as can be ; and all of the time the masses go on devel- 
oping new business for the reformers. Every day, 
the masses study new deviltries for the reformers to 
reform and so it goes in endless chain. It is marvel- 
ous ! It is the wonder of the ages. 



230 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

As I said before, I used to think that if every man 
began by reforming himself according to the Ten Com- 
mandments with a determination also to keep his bowels 
open, eat sparingly, go to church regularly, and live 
within his income, with one wife, we should have need 
of fewer laws. But, every day, I can see that I was 
wrong. The old-fashioned method leads to disregard 
of the "common people." I never met any common 
people, but I suppose that there are some. They all 
seem as uncommon to me as do the violets on the mead. 
But I hear about them every now and then, if not 
oftener. 

"I am for the common people," say the reformers. 
And they are ! I have no doubt about it. But I should 
want to have a chat with their wives first before I was 
sure of it. I hate to say it ; but most of the reformers 
who are concerned only in the common people are no 
more interested in them than some others who do not 
protest so much. We "common people" resent the 
classification. We don't want anyone going about with 
a bleeding heart on our account. We want a square deal, 
fair play, justice, opportunity, reasonable seclusion 
from governmental interference, a chance to work, a 
chance to sleep, a chance to pray and a chance to play. 

In short, if about nine-tenths of the reformers 
would go to work, rear children, pay their bills and try 
to secure for us the freedom to work out the problems 
of the world as individuals, not en masse, we should 
probably do quite as well as we are doing now. And 
in all this, I exclude charity and education. These are 
another thing than social reform. 




ON "RESOURCEFULNESS" 

HAVE BEEN reading a story about a book 
agent who used to take the elevator to the top 
floor of a building in which signs were posted 
against peddlers and book agents, and work 
down. When he was apprehended and fired 
out he would take another elevator and go 
up again and again work down. He worked one fac- 
tory that way for four weeks and got a foothold there 
so that he has been permitted free access to it. 

This is a true story and I happen to know the book 
agent. He has made a success of his business. This 
is a rather extreme example, not to be commended ex- 
actly ; but all the same it gets one there. 

Down in the wheat pit in the New York Produce 
Exchange years ago, during the height of the "wheat 
corner" precipitated by James R. Keene in which that 
daring speculator lost about $7,000,000, was a young 
messenger boy named Frank Kirby. I read about him 
in a little trade journal now before me that, as the 
corner began to crumble and the brokers to call for ad- 
ditional margins, Kirby was sent to Keene's ofRce for 
checks to cover. Some of these checks amounted to 
$600,000 each. Keene handed them over with no more 
perturbation than he would a quarter. 

The Great Bear was cool as a cucumber — never 
batted an eyelash — took it as part of the game. To- 
morrow or next week it would be different — he v/ould 
get his. 

"Keep cool — don't get discouraged — fight on," he 
seemed to say to the boy. 



232 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Fifteen years later, the boy — now a man — started 
out to put an ointment on the map known as Palmer's 
Skin Success. Outside of the limited clientele of a sta- 
tionery store in Nassau street, New York, no one had 
ever heard of this ointment. An old Scotch sea cap- 
tain had brought the formula to America and given it 
to the stationer. It had a few testimonials and Kirby 
was out to get it a wider market. I reckon it would 
make your eyes glisten to read how Kirby shipped $500 
worth of this stuff to Pittsburgh ; followed it by train ; 
sold it from store to store and delivered it on his shoul- 
der. Nothing ever phased him. He chased from town 
to town, Chicago to Terre Haute, paying his expenses 
as he went along and sending what he had left back 
to the factory to keep it going. For fifteen years he 
combed the country and in that time the home office 
had to remit him but $200. He never found fault. 
When other salesmen began finding fault with the 
house for not sending the check, he would smile. 

Once he got into St. Louis with $1.50, but he dug 
out. Once he arrived in a big town with nothing to 
pay his hotel bill. But he never let go. He started for 
San Francisco, buying a return ticket so as to be sure 
of getting out. Ahead of him he shipped a carload of 
his ointment. He had that faith in himself. The 
earthquake struck and his carload of stuff was just out- 
side the zone. It was what was needed and he sold it 
to a fine old company doing business in a shack. In 
1919, this company sold over half a million of their 
products through this man's resoifrcefulness. And this 
lad is vice-president of the company and on easy street. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 233 

Self-reliance and resourcefulness are a great team. 
Jay Gould was once entertained on Schuyler Living- 
stone's yacht, before Jay Gould had a yacht of his own. 
Gould got paint on his broadcloth suit and Livingstone 
bought him a pair of overalls to wear while his trou- 
sers were being cleaned. There was some joking about 
it and while Livingstone went ashore at Peekskill, 
Gould left them and went ashore and sold the overalls 
for two shillings. It made Livingstone laugh and made 
him think. They tried to get even with Gould so they 
put up a job on him when they landed him to compel 
him to swim ashore in his suit. Instead, Gould stripped 
down to his scarlet underwear; waded ashore with 
his suit on his head ; dried off in the sun ; donned his 
clothes and with a laugh on Livingstone took the train. 

He saw the day when he could buy and sell Living- 
stone and all of his capacity came from resourcefulness 
and self-reliance. He could sell rat-traps, sun-dials 
and leather goods; or railroads and steamship lines. 
Buck up ! 




ON "WOODCHUCKING" 

VER in Augusta the other day, one of the state 
officials who used to live in Bowdoinham re- 
called to me the fact that once when I lived in 
that town we had a dog that dug out wood- 
chucks, and then I remembered. 

The dog's name was "Leo." He was a 
black and tan of cur-rent breed, such as runs in a town, 
and he was one of those vigorous and worthy dogs that, 
by growing up unassociated with other dogs, far from 
the madding crowds of other friends, became notional 
and peculiar. In fact, he was the peculiarest dog, in 
some respects, that I ever saw. 

I will not dwell on any of his peculiarities at this 
time, but will only close my eyes figuratively and think 
back to those days when barefoot boys trailed that dog 
over the tree that had fallen by and across the brook , 
thence up the intervale, over the road-bridge, up the 
tumbling water-course that then whitened the path 
between well-cropped meadows ; thence into the woods, 
thru the woods into woodchuck land. 

I never knew why we had to go so far. We were 
not particularly concerned in hunting woodchucks, but 
like many other persons in later life whom I have met, 
we naturally wandered into the old, old ways, day by 
day. There was a long line of stone walls drifting 
over breezy hills. There were red roses clambering 
over them, or growing by their sides. There were 
glimpses of a running brook and of a distant water- 
course far away to the west. There were pine trees 
that sang and soft winds that lifted the damp curls 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 235 

about our brows. And we were barefoot, as I have 
said, and Leo trudged alongside, with apparently no 
regard for bird or beast or other thing — a well-behaved 
and circumspect boy-dog, a perfectly good canine. 

But — all at once, how many times I have seen it — 
the hair on that dog's neck would bristle; he would 
throw his old gray, black and tan nose into the coming 
winds; he would stop with his legs as stiff as a poker, 
and we would then know that Leo had smelled a 
woodchuck. 

I don't know if you ever assisted a forty pound dog 
to dig out a woodchuck or not ; but if you have not and 
have no knowledge of the music he makes ; of the dirt 
he flings ; of the desperation he evinces ; of the gradual 
disappearance of his forequarters as he holes out; of 
the a^^itation in the hole; of the dog's frantic emer- 
gences from the hole to breathe and scratch his nose 
free from the imprints of the chuck's forefeet — you 
do not know what may be fun, or would be fun if you 
could indulge in it. 

Why ! The way that dog goes into the land would 
make a well-borer envious. He would finally disappear 
almost altogether. He would howl and yell and make 
the strangest cries. He would be agitated on by our 
eager advice; for the game gets as exciting for men 
as for the dog ! And finally when he comes out with a 
bunch of fighting woodchuck in his possession and gives 
him the final slat that breaks the connection between 
the vital and the past, there is a flutter of dog and fur 
that surpasses description. 

This Bowdoinham friend of mine says that once he 
had a pet woodchuck, that his father had brought him 
from up in the farther country. He was taking him 



236 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

down the village street with a strap around the neck 
of the woodchuck. Suddenly there was a flight of 
leaping dog ; a scurry of woodchuck ; a mix-up of boy, 
strap, dog and chuck; and when it was all over Leo 
had another woodchuck on his record of deaths. 

My grandfather tried to console the boy for the loss 
and agreed to dig him out another; but grandfather 
was no woodchucker. He was a better promiser than 
performer in that respect, and, besides, he was an old 
man at that time. 

We never ate woodchucks although they were sup- 
posed to be good for the minister's dinner. The world 
has gone around many a time, since then, and I sup- 
pose that dogs still hole out woodchucks and that the 
roses still ramble and the winds still blow and the stone 
walls still drift over the hills. Leo is no more, but 
there may be other dogs. One thing has gone, how- 
ever, an evanescent thing that pertains to the boy — ^the 
care-free pursuit of whatever adventure might come 
when he went out with the dog and with no other pur- 
pose than to find the ultimate worlds beneath the after- 
noon sun — ^this has gone. I know no way to regain 
it — except by memory. 




ON "HAVING THE LUMBAGO" 

NYBODY can have it, I suppose, if he tries. 
He can have mine and keep it as long as he 
likes; or he can pass it on. I have no fur- 
ther use for it. 

The lumbago comes like a robin on the 
lawn. You look out of the window — no robin. 
You look out of the window again — several robins, all 
looking as though they had been there for a week. 

So with lumbago ! You are sitting at the table and 
wondering what makes you feel so good. Then in- 
stantly after you are sitting at the table and wonder- 
ing if you will ever be the same man again. It is just 
like that. Suddener than an old maid's first marriage 
proposal. 

I have had the lumbago over a thousand times in 
my life and nevei* got really acquainted with it. It 
never killed me — as you may notice — but I have often 
wished it would. Painless death is a boon. Death by 
lumbago ! Ye gods ! But then, nobody ever died of it. 
He only ached and ached ! 

The beauty of lumbago is its infinite variety — if it 
has any beauty. It is far from a plastic disease. It 
leaves you as it finds you, transfixed, I mean as you 
were. It is an as-you-were disease. If you happen to 
be bending over tying your shoe — and this is a fine way 
to contract lumbago — and a flock of lumbago happens 
to be flying along and happens to nail you, why there 
you are ! You have to serve out that trick of lumbago 
curved up in bed like an interrogation point. One 
time I was here at my desk and I leaned over to pick 



238 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

up a copy of the Revised Statutes of Maine that was 
lying in its usual place in the waste-basket, and the 
lumbago took me. Indeed, several lumbagos took me, 
front, back and side wise, and I had to walk home with 
the Revised Statutes and the waste-basket in front of 
me, so as to keep from scratching my nose on the side- 
walks. I better have stuck my toe in my mouth and 
rolled home, only I feared that the crossing cops would 
arrest me for speeding. I have walked a hundred miles 
back and forth from this desk to my home, bending 
over like the Man with the Hoe. I have been seen on 
the streets in attitudes that baffle description and that 
have aroused grave suspicion as to the workings of the 
Maine liquor laws, all on account of lumbago. 

Once in my early experience with this singular ail- 
ment, I was sitting at the table at home and stretching 
out as a man has a right to when he is alone. I sought 
to squirm out from my posture without using my hands 
on the arms of my chair and the lumbar muscles broke 
and I smiled and said "Ooch." I was younger then and 
not so familiar with the disease, known variously as a 
stitch in the back or the lumbago. I went over to the 
office and sank into a chair. There is a funny thing 
about my type of lumbago, it is all right when you don't 
try to bend it. Bend my lumbago and it shrieks ; leave 
it alone and it is peaceful. So I sat that day at my 
desk at work. My posture happened to be just on the 
radius of the curve of the no-lumbago and nothing 
shrieked. Lumbago grows rapidly worse until it gets 
better. When I tried to go home that night it took the 
whole office force to pry me out of that chair and get 
me into my coat. They could not get me into a cab; 
because I refused to let them roll me head first like a 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 239 

barrel. They could not straighten me out to fit a street 
car. They couM not get me into a wagon because my 
face struck the fonder. They could not get me into a 
Ford because the rear door was too small. Finally, 
they laid me on my side in the tonneau of a patrol 
wagon and took me home. My family would not be- 
lieve for days that it was a harmless disease. 

I had as soon lie abed with the lumbago as not. If 
you are careful you can find a position that is painless. 
You can read and smoke ; think and dream ; have your 
food brought; eat anything you like; doze away the 
happy hours with your back plastered up and your 
days rolling on peacefully. You have a perfect alibi. 
You can NOT get up. No use to discuss it. You are 
frozen into that position. Why worry. The longest 
and happiest rest for me, that ever happened in my 
house, was when I had two weeks of the lumbago. 

But the darn thing does not take you in bed. Once 
it took me on the way to New York. I happened to be 
standing up at the time. I was able to walk absolutely 
rigidly erect, but not to bow to the ladies or to cavort 
much of any. It was on that occasion that I acquired 
all the reputation for dignity that I ever managed to 
get — away from home. I know a man who traveled 
selling candles to miners. He had the lumbago more 
times than I. It would take him anywhere, in the back, 
in the neck, in the foot, in the mine, in the hotel. It 
made no difference. But he has outgrown it and so 
have I — we both trust. He is likely to have better rea- 
sons for his trustfulness than I, because he is 78 years 
old and I am younger. We shall feel sure, both of us, 
when we are angels. They surely could not have it — 
and fly. 




ON "FACES WAITING AT THE 
WINDOW" 

IVERYBODY smiled and many persons waited 
and looked a while, some even loitering about 
the gateway and calling persons' attention to 
it as they came along. 

It was not much — only two small boys 
with their bibs on looking out the window, 
down the long street, waiting for dad to come home 
from work. 

Their bibs indicated that they were ready for the 
noon meal — we eat dinner at noon, in Maine, as a rule — 
and their bibs also indicated that they were not more 
than five years of age. One, in fact, was four, and the 
other was three. Two girls, of about ten and eight, 
were in the background. Four of them — rosy, healthy, 
red-cheeked, looking out of the window, waiting for 
dad. 

"By jove," said several men who came along as I 
was loitering looking at them, "you can't beat it. Look 
at that youngest boy! Ain't he a buster! Bet he'll 
weigh forty pounds. Nothin' finer anywhere than a lot 
of youngones. Druther have 'em than a million 
dollars." 

A schoolmarm, whom I happen to know, looked at 
them less enthusiastically than some of the rest of us. 
She had a rather weary look in her eyes as she watched 
them. The smaller boy was pressing his nose against 
the pane and flattening it out of perspective. "Fine," 
said I tentatively, standing around to get impressions 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 341 

for future use. "Ye-e-es!" said she rather gray and 
drab-like. It was a drawing in of the breath ; a "yes" 
that is inhaled, as for relief, rather than exhaled for 
belief, "ihey are lovely, I think; but I — I could get 
tired even of orchids." 

A woman who works in one of the shops came along 
and said as she looked at them, "Cunning ! Guess my 
youngsters are hungry waiting for me, too. I've two 
of the nicest children on THIS hill." Declared opinions 
on comparative children are never "copy," so she 
passed on and smiled and waved a hand to the two 
boys, still pressing their noses against the pane. 

The ice-man who came down the hill with a clatter 
of wheels, seemed to know the boys. They seemed to 
recognize him. Up and down they danced and banged 
the window. The ice-man laughed all over. Good 
friends, apparently. Probably they have talked politics 
or boy-stuff together in the backyard this spring. May- 
be he is one of those men who know what a small boy 
would care to talk about — squirrels, perhaps ; or maybe 
the information eagerly sought that he had run across 
a black bear as he was driving his ice-cart over be- 
yond the "heights" the other day. Maybe they have 
organized a bear-hunt for "some day." 

A dad who has a window full of youngsters waiting 
for him to come to feed, has a responsibility and a hap- 
piness. He will see them afar and wave. He will do 
a fancy step or two on the walk when he sees them and 
they will convulse with glee— dad IS such a funny man. 
He will pretend not to be able to see them when he 
gets into the house and pretend to hunt for the cling- 
ing arms and the belligerent poundings on his anatomy. 
He will wonder if dinner is ready; just to be assured. 



242 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

He will boost the youngest into the air and catch him. 

It is not so much what he does — if only the young- 
sters really do wait for him. The dad who has young- 
sters who do not wait for him and generally want him 
to come home — boys or girls, it matters not, the way 
of life is the same — ^has something that he ought to 
think about. 

Of course, dad has the best of it. Mother is often 
an old story. She is not in the window. She is in the 
kitchen. She and the school-marm both inhale their 
"Yesses." Dad is a change. Dad is a new thing. And 
dad does not want to take himself too seriously. When 
the pinch comes and there is a choice between the serv- 
ices of the two — mother wins. But that has nothing 
to do with the case. If you are not awaited by the 
child you should look into it. You are not making home 
over and above happy. 

And what is there for you, if there be not joy in 
your train around the house. What is there in it for 
anyone if you are a dark cloud from which children 
flee! Come on, youngsters! All of you, old and 
young. Make merry around the Tree of Life. It is 
bright; full of lights and joys. The children wait. 
The firelight gleams. All is peace. 




ON "ADVICE TO REPORTERS*' 

NE time a great many years ago, Mr. Blaine 
spoke at a public meeting in Maine and I was 
there to report him. He was then a candidate 
for President of the United States and his 
words were worth a dollar and a quarter 
apiece, if not more. It was difficult to get 
within hearing distance of the great man, but being 
small, squirmy and persistent I forced my way through 
the crowds on the fair ground where Mr. Blaine was 
speaking and got a position. 

It was all over and I was sitting in the room reading 
over the report of the speech which I had written. It 
was in the forenoon and my story of the scene and of 
the speech was going along in a few moments, when a 
stir around the building was followed by an impatient 
and impetuous courier who said : "Mr. Blaine is look- 
ing for you. For God's sake (and the sake of the coun- 
try also, I suppose he meant to add), you have not sent 
the story along without letting him see it." 

I have no objection to mentioning that this ardent 
courier was Mr. Manley, then national committeeman, 
and a power of political and business acumen. I was 
timid and stammered my thankfulness to both the 
Deity and to all of the Republican Party. I had not 
sent the story along. It lay before me. And in, very 
soon, came the mighty man to sit at my humble desk 
and con the manuscript which was written in my rough 
and ready chirography; for it was before the days of 
typewriters, especially portable ones. 

Mr. Blaine was a very handsome man. He had the 
whitest of hair and an ivory tinted complexion— a sort 



244 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

of pallor of the student ; although he was more a stu- 
dent of others than of books. He also had a wonderful 
gentleness and consideration for everyone. I reckon he 
saw that I was bashful and embarrassed. He took my 
writing and (with my permission) began to look at it, 
remarking that he always wanted to know what was to 
be printed, especially when he spoke informally as he 
had spoken that day. "One should always see what is 
written about one's self." 

So we sat down at the same desk and he took out 
a lead pencil and began to go over the story. He was 
an editor ; one of the early Maine editors ; one editor, by 
the way, who did not win. I can see him plainly enough 
making his corrections on the manuscript, smoothing 
out rough places ; for I had tried to take him verbatim, 
easy enough, as he was a most deliberate speaker. 

Finally Mr. Blaine passed the manuscript back, 
after a quarter of an hour of erasures and corrections 
of form, and then he leaned back in his chair. They 
were waiting for him outside, bands blaring and poli- 
ticians carking. But he did not hurry. For a time he 
looked at me tolerantly and then he said : "I have not 
found any errors of importance but rather errors of 
exactness. Let me tell you something to remember all 
through life. In all of your reporting of the speech of 
others, endeavor to say not simply what the speaker 
said but also to say it a great deal better than he 
said it." 

I cut loose after that. I have written since then, 
into speeches of the distinguished, harmless things 
that they never dreamed of. I have tried to say what 
they have said and to say it better and then some. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 245 

This is no boasting; for believe me, it is easy, espe- 
cially when a poor man is stammering and forgetting 
his verbs. You know what he wants to say; say it in 
words of one syllable for the poor man. I have joined 
together ideas in the holy bonds of rhetoric for men 
and women who never knew the offspring until they 
read it and then they have said: "I was going well 
when I said that, was I not?" Chief Justice Peters of 
Maine appreciated this favor. I once dined with him 
where another Justice of the Court, now dead and far 
happier, I believe, reproached me for some harmless- 
enough stories that I had written about him. The Chief 
twinkled as only he could and said : "Don't be hard on 
the newspaper boys, judge. They are good boys. 
When I was in Washington, in Congress, they used to 
report my speeches. I really got most of my fine vo- 
cabulary from reading what they said I said. Damn 
sight better than I could do, judge." 

But then. Terrible things do happen to speeches. 
The abruptness with which some of these reporters 
make a person pass from idea to unrelated idea in par- 
agraphs, reminds one of the Alpine goat leaping from 
crag to crag. My advice to the young is therefore as 
Mr. Blaine put it — report what the speaker said ; say it 
better than he did, if possible. And by that we both 
mean, "smooth it, smooth it !" 




ON "EATING YEAST" 

AVING accepted no retainer from Fleischmann 
and having no purpose either to advocate or 
to discourage eating yeast, I propose only to 
put the topic before you and let it rise. 

There wsis a time when a person who ate 
a cake of yeast would expect to die, bubbling, 
ballooning toward the zenith. I recall when mother 
made "emptings" bread ; keeping the crock on the man- 
tel over the kitchen stove covered with a plate. The 
"emptings" were made of a modicum of ferment to 
which were added now and then the bits of flakings 
from dough, the tiny scrapings of the mixing-pan when 
making bread. 

This material would ferment, "rise," overflow the 
crock; run down its sides to the plate in which the 
crock was set; standing there day in and day out, 
frescoed with streamers of white like stucco. When 
mother made bread she took some of this "emptings" 
for yeast. It made the best of bread. It was sweet 
and pure. The emptings had a slightly acid taste and 
"bubbled" in the crock. It had a good flavor. 

Once I ate a lot of it, to the consternation of the 
family. No one had hitherto eaten "emptings," seem- 
ingly. I recall how they eyed me, plainly expecting 
some phenomenon not hitherto seen in the household. 
I had a notion myself that I was doomed to go off the 
face of earth in a tremendous explosion. I feared also 
that sprouts and stringers like those on sprouting po- 
tatoes might come out of my ears. I went out and 
leaned over the pig-pen and talked to the hog, doomed 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 247 

to early death like myself, a habit I had when despond- 
ent, and told him what I had done, bidding him beware 
of gourmandizing. I expected to inflate and float. I 
expected that I might grow — literally "rise," like a 
loaf of bread, to enormous height. Nothing happened. 
The family waited expectantly for their rather dimin- 
utive boy to expand like Humpty Dumpty, sitting on 
the wall. They poked my abdomen expectantly. I sat 
on the doorsteps and gloomed, full of emptings and 
forebodings. My brothers advised me to eat flour and 
make bread, internally. 

I did not know that I was forty years ahead of time. 
I was "vitamining" ; that was all. The "emptings" 
may have made me "winter" better; which was the 
chief consideration in those days ; how may a boy "win- 
ter." Did your cattle "winter" well? 

Today they eat yeast-cakes for the complexion; for 
corns ; to make the hair curl ; to ward off appendicitis ; 
to lengthen the eyelashes; to improve the disposition; 
to strengthen the niind ; to calm the temperament and 
to help one estimate his income tax. 

We are wards of "Vitamines" — minute guardians of 
robust health, resident in uncooked cabbage and yeast. 
We have merely grubbed along in the dark for 240,000 
years, "vitamineless" ; now the knowledge of Vitamines 
A. B. C. is the electric torch along the way. We for- 
tify ourselves against premature age by spreading 
crackers with Fleischmann and eating them as one 
formerly ate his crackers and cheese. 

The other day I was on the dining-car of the even- 
ing train out of Portland, Me., standing in line wait- 
ing for a seat at table. Next to me were two young 



248 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

women also waiting. Back of them was a line of 
twenty more. It was first come, first served. 

Suddenly one of the girls said: "Gracious, I forgot 
my yeast ! I've got to go back and get it and I'll lose 
my place." 

She went back and got it and we kept her place. 

"Do you think it is helping my complexion any?" 
asked she on her return. "How could it?" replied the 
other girl ambiguously. 

Occasionally I can feel those vitamines stirring in 
me, those that I ate, fifty years ago. I am sure they do 
me good even now — especially that I have just discov- 
ered that they were good for what ailed me, no mat- 
ter what it might have been. 



ON "THE MAINE OF 100 YEARS" 

T WAS all here, a hundred years ago, when old 
Peleg Tallman called to his wife, "Aunt Bet- 
sey, bring me my cowhide boots. I'm goin' to 
the General Court and make a State." It was 
the same soft song of pine in the winds and 
the same sweet rote of the sea upon the shores ; 
and the tides, drawn by the pale hand of the moon, 
came up out of the mystery and swept dark and white 
into the same recesses as they do now. 

We live very little as a state, in a hundred years. A 
few folks come and go and a few names are remem- 
bered, to no great purpose, and a few more white stones 
stand for a little while in the long grasses of the sum- 
mer-time fields; but over the face of the earth come 
very few changes. A town may come here and a town 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 249 

may disappear there. A river may eat its way into 
the meadow. A mountain, like Katahdin, may drift 
away a few of its hexagons. We may fret a river with 
a dam. We may cut a highway through the wilder- 
ness. We may fell a great many of our trees. But at 
the heart, under it all, beats something that we never 
have estimated at its worth — the integral earth, the 
forces of nature, the undying life that springs from the 
native soil of a State. 

All of the newspapers that took the occasion of 
March 15th, 1920, to sing songs of praise to our land 
of the pine, overlooked something that we Maine- 
born folk rather cherish; and that is a belief that we 
somehow partake of the soil. It is impossible that a 
person, born where blue hills lift and where rugged 
seas beat, and where islands sleep near and far, and 
where there is music in the pines and spruce and 
dreamful hours under the crimson canopies of autumn 
forests, should come up out of the soil like those who 
are born in flat-land. The desert does not produce the 
oak and the apple, but the palm and date trees. You 
do not find rushing, eager waters in equatorial lands. 
You do not find harbors and conflict of seas, and men 
and women a-sea in tiny boats and feeling safe in the 
hand of the Lord, in those lazy lands where the seas 
come not nigh. We are a rugged folk. We have a 
land of winter. We have a school of old-fashioned 
hardship. We have the virtues of self-reliance. We 
have sympathy with the hills, whence cometh our sal- 
vation. We know the silences of our lakes and the 
throb of nature at eventide when the ripple sings on 
the shingle with the steady beating of the minute-hand 
of nature. Never heard it ! Don't know what I mean ! 



250 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Never heard Nature breathe, as breathes a giant 
asleep ! YOU are not from Maine ! 

It is well to think over the past of Maine. There 
have been fine men and women, here. The hundred 
years that we have fretted it, with our little lives, have 
been kindly; and the sweet old state, smiling in the 
fastnesses of her lakes and through the clefts in her 
hills and over her mountain tops, probably feels that 
we have been very good children. But the eternal does 
not fret! The eternal goes on and on and on. The 
summer comes to this favored land of ours as to no 
other. I have tried to tell of it again and again. The 
winter sweeps her as it sweeps no other. I have tried 
to tell about it, peering in through open doors to fire- 
sides old and new, sacred with memories and blessed 
by happy hours. It is this that I would talk about this 
hundred years of Maine. Maine the eternal ! the gift 
of the very gods to a favored people. The finest land 
beneath the sun. The abode of comfort, ease and 
plenty. The sweetest neighborhood state in all the 
world. The loveliest in winter, the richest in spring, 
the most paradisical in summer, the most gloriously 
beautiful in the autumn. I am ashamed to say all that 
I could say about Maine. One should not "cut loose" 
and indulge himself about Maine. He should be re- 
served and careful and then he will be needing adjec- 
tives at that. Maine the beautiful ! 

The hundred years of Maine have been sympathet- 
ically lived by us who have partaken of its life, and 
have not forsaken it; who have understood it and not 
belied it. I see not the great who have passed out into 
larger life; but that succession of the plain, steady, 
simple folk, the mothers and the fathers of us; the 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 251 

quaint life ; the eager town-meeting politics ; the fisher- 
man's dory far out at sea in the gathering storm; the 
shipmasters, the ships; the rocking forest and the 
woodsman's axe; the old home and the mother in the 
doorway; the schoolhouse in the dale; the log-driver 
and the leaping trout; the evenings by the fire, the 
scholars by the evening lamp. 

Again I smell the apple blossoms and I kiss the earth 
of Maine ! 



ON "SAP-BOILING TIME" 

T IS about sap-boiling time. Pretty soon we 
shall be thinking of those times when we put 
on snowshoes; went up over the ridge to the 
sugar orchard and began to have real fun. 
What an epic in the lives of old-fashioned New 
England boys! Talk about modern material- 
ism and the demands of the proletariat. They never 
can and never may know the mental, spiritual, physical 
uplift of one of those clear mornings, with God's very 
face shining into ours ; with the smoke of the chimneys 
of the town rising against the morning sky — youth in 
our hearts and spring in the air ! Ah me ! 

I do not know why people turn away from such 
things to the town, to sit in the movie house when up 
here on the high hills ar^ such glories! "The fresh 
land rising from the snow, reminds me," said Thoreau, 
"of the isle, which was called up from the bottom of 
the sea, which was given to Apollo. Or, like the skin 
of the leopard, the great mother leopard that Nature 
is, where she lies at length, exposing her flanks in the 




252 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

sun. I feel as though I could land to kiss and stroke 
the very sward, it is so fair. It is homely and domestic 
to my eyes like the rug that lies before my hearth- 
side." So we see it ; as, in the mind's eyes we are again 
boys, journeying over the hills, to the sap-orchard — the 
bare spots showing here and there ; the soft south wind 
a-blowing; the water sibilantly singing under the 
snow; a persistent "drip, drip" from the tree and a 
honeycombing of the snows to the south of old bowlders 
and lo ! sweat under the hat-band. 

There was ever a tree brushing the roof of the old 
sap-house as it stood against a bank for the saving of 
wall-space. The rustle of the leaves was sweet music ; 
the dripping of the water from the eaves, a lullaby ; the 
odor of the steaming sap, an incense. If you have ever 
sat yourself down of a spring morning after making 
your way thither and looked it over — the long sweep of 
the hillside, through the bare, upstanding maples; the 
ice-bound brook at the bottom of the hill; the whole 
world at one's feet. A goodly view ! 

If you bruise the tree's side and its life-blood seems 
to come with a gush you know then it is indeed spring. 
You know nothing like the first drink of the maple sap. 
It has a woody taste like the taste of a fresh chip that 
you have chewed contemplatively, ere this. It is 
some trick to tap a tree. No amateur does it well, at 
the beginning. The flank of the sugar-maple is as hard 
as a rock. But it can be done, as well as some other 
things. 

I never think of sugar-making, but I think of the 
struggles of old-time boys for cash as profits of the 
venture. Things were very different, were they not, 
when boys had to undertake business ventures of their 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 253 

own in order to get the money for schooling. I can 
remember the early walks over the pastures to the 
sugar maple lot. I can remember the exhilaration of 
the work, the fun that was mixed in with back-aching 
toil. And I always recall the story of the old-time boys 
who with longing in their hearts for larger returns 
coveted a six-dollar sugaring-off pan which tantalized 
them in a store in the distant town. Six dollars was 
as the treasures of the Ind to those boys. But one day 
on the way home from the "lot," they saw through the 
breaking ice a mink disporting on the bank. One of 
the boys remained in concealment and watched the 
mink, and the other hurried home for the old family 
gun. 

I have heard the man, grown to riches and good es- 
tate, tell the story many times of the tense moment 
when it fell to him to level the gun at the mink, still 
nibbling away unsuspecting across the way. His 
hands shook ; his eyes dimmed ; his heart throbbed ; his 
breath came in quick, spasmodic inhalations. If he 
missed, all was at an end ; if he hit, there was money 
in it and hope for business expansion. He fired and 
the mink keeled over. They skinned him; stretched 
and prepared the skin and sold it for exactly six dol- 
lars which exactly paid for the sugaring-off pan and ex- 
actly made their venture into a profit. 

Far from me to attempt to retell the familiar scenes 
of the camp behind the bluff facing southward ; of the 
chill nights; of the long evenings; of the visits from 
the girls; of the happy and the toilsome hours com- 
mingled into the memory of old New England days. 
There are memories of golden moons upon the snow; 
of swift rivulets growing in the meadows ; of familiar 




254 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

odors that seem to come back out of the past, again 
borne on the nostrils as of the earth and the fields. An- 
other spring — each of them numbered, and ticketed! 
And then perchance spring eternal! 



ON "THE FIRST CROW" 

ERHAPS he is not the first crow of spring but 
the first caws of spring. I hear him everj 
year, on some March morning as I lie in bed, 
a distant cry, far up in the sky and away off 
as though winging northward with the alma- 
nac. I turn on my pillow and look at the ceil- 
ing and it retreats into a canopy of leafy branches and 
limpid sky and I seem to hear the sea beat on rocks 
covered with sea-weed and to watch soft days come 
and go. 

I say that he is not the first crow of spring because 
he may after all be the last crow of winter living on 
the clam-flats by the sea. They have done such 
things — though probably not this winter, for they are 
wise birds and have powers of augury of unseasonable 
winters. But he is the first crow to me. And never 
for many years have I failed to hear that distant dis- 
tinct caw out of the unknown saying "Spring." 

Yesterday I heard him and he is here. Several have 
seen him and one man has shot him — monstrous thing 
to do, it seems to me, to shoot the first crow that comes 
over crying "Caw-w-w." Just for that no man should 
shoot the first crow. 

But this man did. He told me about it today — as 
happening at his summer camp at Lake Tacoma, 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 255 

which is near this town. He awoke in the morning 
of Saturday last and though it were the 20th of 
March, the very almanac of the beginning of spring, 
the day of the vernal equinox and the trumpetings 
thereof, the winds howled and the storms raged and 
the blizzard did its will. Around the northeast corner 
of his house there was a wailing of gales. The trees 
shook and the windows rattled and yet the next morn- 
ing there sounded the voice of the crow. 

This man is a practicalist in nature. He knows all 
about crows and their depredations. I know only that 
sound out of the sky, saying "Caw-a-daw!" and the 
fading roof and the budding summer in my mind's eye. 
For me to shoot it, would be to shoot Spring in the 
stomach and disembowel fair Endymion. But for this 
practicalist of Nature, who knows how to snare the 
trout and where to lure the bass, and how to find the 
rabbit on the snow, it was a matter of apprehending a 
robber. Poor old crow, just out of a morning, saying 
"caw-w-w" by way of encouragement to society. God 
made him to rob early birds' nests. God made him 
black and shiny and gave him a keen and alert mind, 
with which to beat society to a finish. 

So this man, who is my friend, took down the old 
double-barrel 10-gauge and loaded it with an antique, 
black-powder shell. And he poked its muzzle out of 
the kitchen window and the crow who knows the muz- 
zle of a loaded gun from the muzzle of an empty gun 
fled. He never would have come back again doubtless 
but smoke was rising from the lonely man's chimney 
and neighborliness got the better of the crow. And 
the man waited, never moving, and the crow came back 
to his tree and again ventured to proclaim himself as 



256 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

the harbinger of the vernal crisis. Caw-w-w ! It was 
his swan song. The old 10-gauge spoke; the black 
powder shell exploded with a roar like a big Bertha 
and the man behind the gun awoke, so he says, on top 
of a red-hot kitchen stove, his gun in the wood-box and 
his rear supporting infantry badly scorched. 

Later, the man went out to look for the crow. Not a 
feather; but a little farther on, the crow head down 
in a snow-bank quite dead. And later he is to be hung 
in a corn-field to frighten away his family when they 
shall have come in such numbers that one death or 
more in the Corvus crew, will never bring out any 
obituary of mine or of any one else. 

And yet — and yet ! He was an early bird ! He was 
the first voyageur up into our lands of promise. He 
must have had some peculiar claim on life ! He must 
have been an extraordinary crow. He must have had 
a heart of sympathy for our long hibernation. He 
must have felt for us septentrions. He must have been 
wiser than some other crows in everything but his esti- 
mate of the man who lived in that particular house 
under the spruces. Possibly he was an idealist among 
crows — somehow feeling that as he alone brought the 
message of relief, he would be immune. I only hope 
that the time may never come when this friend of mine, 
marooned in ice and snow, seeing no hope of the sun's 
turning north, may wait in vain for the crow's note — 
or hear it only in ghostly mimicry, from the soul of this 
murdered crow that was the "voice of Spring." 



ON "GOING TO SUNDAY SCHOOL" 




UNDAY schools are not what they used to be. 
To begin with, they used to be "Sabbath 
schools," and the "Sabbath school" library 
used to be full of moral literature. I remem- 
ber some of the books that I used to go up and 
draw — "Robert Ronald or the Tale of a Good 
Boy;" "William Ashton;" "Dare to Do Right, or the 
Story of James Brown." They were liver-colored 
books with confidential communications on the fly 
leaves warning us as to their contents — "This is the 
worst book I ever read." It was all the realism that 
the books contained. I understand that now a boy is 
liable to draw Sunday school books like this: "Cow- 
boys of the Wild West ;" "The Boy Wireless, or How 
Dick Saved the Navy;" "Life in a Tank, or the Adven- 
tures of Jack Harding," Good gracious ! When I was 
a boy, if you saw the name "Tom" or "Dick" or "Jack" 
on the title page, you just knew that the boy was a bad 
one; missed in spelling; went wrong and failed to ex- 
perience religion before the age of ten crime-soaked 
years. I can just SMELL those old Sunday school 
books. They just stunk of piety. We hated 'em. The 
only good book in our Sabbath school library was 
"Ivanhoe" — and they didn't know it was good either. 
If they had, they wouldn't have let it in. They ruled 
out Horatio Alger and even Elijah Kellogg's "Elm 
Island" stories, while, as for "Oliver Optic" — his books 
were not permitted, because they were not founded on 
facts — like "William Ashton" I suppose, who died of 
piety and pulmonary troubles none too soon. 



258 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

All the religion I ever got as a child in the Sabbath 
school was through my feet. I usually got new boots 
and a new suit of clothes about June, and, of course, 
that stimulated the folks to send me to Sabbath school. 
I felt hot and my feet swelled and I was wretched and 
in no mood to absorb much religion any way and what 
I did get came by suffering. There would be about a 
half dozen boys in my set, who went through this ex- 
perience, and we always hid our William Ashtons under 
the church steps and took off our shoes and fled for 
comfort right after Sabbath school. So that in my 
memory of seeking spiritual comfort all I can remem- 
ber is hot, stuffy clothes and aching feet. It was a ter- 
rible cross to wear boots in those days. The teachers 
never understood what made us fidget so and shuffle 
our feet in the Sabbath school. But I knew. You have 
got to understand boys. Now if they had begun teach- 
ing us about the apostles whose shoes were removed 
and whose feet were washed, we might have been in- 
terested. I tell you this — you can't study boys too 
much. If they are restless there is some cause, other 
than lack of religion. Their minds are very busy as a 
rule, scheming or pining for this or that. What they 
want, they want mightily, and naturally it isn't found 
in Sunday school unless you put it there. So if I were 
going to teach a class of boys, the first thing I would 
do would be to ask them if they were itching any- 
where (say, up and down the back) ; then I would like 
to know if their shoes hurt ; and then if everything was 
all right I would start out and tell them some sea stories 
about Peter — fishing nights, miraculous catches, wal- 
loping big nets full, walking on the water by Peter and 
others, spies going over into the Promised Land and 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 259 

seeing giants forty or fifty feet tall— (make it any size 
you like) ; some of those snappy fight stories in Judges ; 
story of Lot, the bum nephew of Abraham; work up 
a climax on Lot's wife and illustrate it with a sample 
of rock-salt; get their opinions on Jonah and the 
whale (their opinions will be quite as valuable as 
yours) ; and play up Goliath strong. Don't forget Da- 
vid and Goliath ! As my dulled recollections brighten 
I do recall that I learned about "Goli-ar" ; for we used 
to play the drama, staging it under the old oak tree on 
Curtis's Hill. 

Of course, never having taught a Sunday school 
class of boys, I don't know whether I could pull off a 
hair-lifter every Sunday for fifty weeks in the year 
and incidentally work in a modicum of spiritual pabu- 
lum with it, but I believe that there are those who 
could. Instead, they used to make us learn a verse 
from the Scripture ; sing "Shall We Gather at the Riv- 
v-v-er ; the bee-you-tif ul, bee-you-u-u-tif ul Riv-er" and 
take home a copy of that sprightly weekly publication 
"The Myrtle," as proof of having gone to Sabbath 
school. 

It is suggestive to me, therefore, after many years 
of absence from Sunday school, to go back again these 
days and see the rows of interested children — their feet 
fully accustomed to shoes ; their little backs encased in 
silk underwear and not prickling with old-fashioned 
red-flannel or no underwear at all ; their big eyes look- 
ing straight ahead and to hear the interesting discus- 
sion of sociology and the Bolsheviks. It is very inter- 
esting to see trained choir-leaders and watch children 
march in disciplined step and hear them deliver ten 



260 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

minute addresses and feel that they know all about the 
fundamentals of Christian living. 

We have, therefore, come along — judging by me. I 
suppose that I had a vague idea of some Christian es- 
sentials when I was ten years old, but I didn't get it 
from "William Ashton." Perhaps I got it from 
Beadles' Dime Library, which 1 read, as issued weekly. 
At any rate, I did not swear, or lie, or steal; I spoke 
respectfully to my parents ; I never sassed my elders ; I 
never broke any of the ten commandments, of which 
I was perfectly well informed. So I suppose I learned 
all of this in this Sabbath school. And if so, and 
through my feet, all I can say is that it went the route 
if it got to my head. All of which ends as it should 
by advising you to send the diildren to Sunday school 
and go yourself to see that they get there. 




ON "THE CHIMNEY CORNER" 

LD TIMER, — I wonder what you think of most 
often as the years lengthen and the days 
draw nigh when there is no pleasure in them. 
Is it not the old folks in the chimney cor- 
ner, way back in some old New England 
farmhouse ? 
I speak of chimney corner figuratively; for most of 
us now living have no clear conceptions or memories 
of an actual chimney corner in those days. Stoves had 
come in abruptly along about the time of our early 
youth, say along in the fifties, and they had driven out 
the old fireplace rather rudely. Fireplaces in the "set- 
tin-rooms" were faced with a sheet-iron contraption 
and pierced by the funnel of the air-tight, even in the 
land where sweet, fair-heating and fragrant white 
birch wood was to be had for the hauling. 

The chimney corner of which we think was almost 
always in the kitchen — big and fine, yellow-floored with 
a roaring cookstove eating up the wood, wood-box be- 
hind the stove, long, smoothly painted, and just big 
enough for a little lad to curl himself upon, and toast 
like the dog and the cat, that usually crawled up with 
him and disputed for comfort. 

I can see the old folks now, grandfather and grand- 
mother, sitting by that central heat, talking and smok- 
ing — yes, both of them smoking together their evening 
pipes. The braided rugs lay evenly on the floor. The 
old, tall clock clicks away in the corner and utters 
every now and then strange internal rumblings and 
premonitory warnings of intent to mark the hour. The 



262 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

table of the evening meal — for we all ate in the kitchen 
in those simple days — is pushed aside and covered with 
its red damask company cloth. The old case of books 
shines in the lamplight and shows Josephus, the Bible 
and the 10,000 useful recipes of Dr. Pierce, all in a row. 
The almanac hangs on its appointed hook and woe to 
him who failed to restore it thereto after using it. The 
pantry shines with its rows of milk cans and its gleam- 
ing pewter. The fire roars through the little openings 
of the draft and the wind of winter wails over the hills 
and far away. 

Somehow, after all, this appeals to one who sees the 
quieter and more serene intent of life. There was 
peace, at least, in this evening scene. The children 
were not scrapping over the movies. The daughters 
were not bothering to go to some dance where the fret 
of life and the appeal of the unknown disturb their 
studies and vitiate their purposes. The study books 
afforded about the only relief from the monotony of 
the chimney corner and the evening callers were al- 
most always sure to come stomping in with slates and 
pencils and the old Greenleaf's Arithmetic for a bout 
at the old mysteries of the grindstone problem. We 
may well believe that these boys and girls, thus brought 
up to expect little from exterior life ; to find in neigh- 
borhood and the chimney corner the inspiration and 
the source of hope and human love ; to believe in them- 
selves and not copy from others and imitate the eccen- 
tricities and the vices before they imitate the virtues 
and the self-repressions, would develop a sturdy man- 
hood and womanhood and go out into life better 
equipped than now. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 263 

We may be wrong. But the voice of the chimney 
corner is potent. It calls on us to believe in the sim- 
pler life. It asks us to honor the home and respect the 
father and the mother; it senses the protection that 
went with the roof of home over the head, the good- 
night kiss, the fond hands of mother tucking us in with 
the sweet good-night. How many boys and girls get 
that now? How many would accept it now? How 
many would fail to resent it as an intrusion? How 
many mothers would bother to give it? But you and I 
know of old-fashioned chimney-corner mothers who 
never failed to see boys and girls tucked into bed; to 
pass along in the quiet, darkened room and whisper a 
good thought as the hands of mother pressed to brow. 

I wonder if it is better now — ^boys and girls romp- 
ing away to chop sueys, dances, movies and joy-rides 
and coming home when they please. I wonder if we 
are producing better manhood and womanhood than 
when the chimney comer had a place in our lives and 
home was something more than a boarding place and 
parents something more than easy money. 




ON "SULPHURANDMOLASSES" 

CAN FIND "sulphur" in the dictionary, but 
I can't find sulphurandmolasses. But as the 
water begins to run into the gutters and I can 
hear the robin on the lawn, I can find it in 
memory. 

Sulphurandmolasses was an old-fashioned 
spring lifter for boys. It was supposed to eradicate the 
winter humours and put pep into a lad who otherwise 
seemed to have nothing in him but the odor of winter 
woolens. Take an old-fashioned boy who had win- 
tered in his clothes and not been introduced to the bath- 
tub for seven months on account of the bath-tub being 
frozen up back of the kitchen ell, and give him sulphur- 
andmolasses in tablespoonfuls, three times a day and 
two at night, and you could get lint out of him that had 
been ingrained there since long before Christmas. It 
is a natural squeegee. It will force more wickedness 
out of a red-headed, freckle-faced boy than three weeks 
of walloping. It is good for what ails a boy; no mat- 
ter what ails him. It is a duty well performed — is sul- 
phurandmolasses ! It will sweat more Boy out of him 
than any other remedy known to the pharmacopoeia. 
I can't understand why they stopped giving it. It was 
good for the boys of the sixties and seventies, why not 
now? I don't believe there is a United States Senator 
aged sixty in Washington today who was not fed sul- 
phurandmolasses. And see what it did for them! 

Mother always began it by some sort of instinct. 
She knew ! Along about the time woodchucks began to 
stir, she began to stir the sulphur into the molasses. 
She looked us over and she saw that Bill had the snuffles 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 265 

and that William had the hookworm and Tom had a 
peculiarly far-away odor of old garments and that Sis 
was pimply, and so she said, "Tomorrow every one of 
you children begins takin' sulphurandmolasses." And 
we did, you bet. What ma said went, in "them days." 
Applause was light, as mother spoke. We knew that 
we were quite healthy; and yet there was a sort of 
hibernating spell on us. We had a lot of winter rind 
on us. We had bunked close and in our negligee, so 
to speak. I don't suppose that we would have recog- 
nized a night-shirt if we had seen it. Never ! Peel off 
the habiliments of day and there you were. Nix on 
frills. Sis in the red flannel; we in the dashing garb 
of nature and the depth of the feather bed. Little he- 
bears could do no more, not to mention he-bares. So 
sped winter in luxury of real life next to natur'. Joe 
Knowles had nothing on us, nights. No more had we. 

So sulphurandmolasses was intended to slough off 
the sloth of the dark period of perfect peace. Mother 
mixed sulphurandmolasses stiff. She applied it lib- 
erally. It was not so bad if you did not think so. 
There have been worse remedies and a lot that did 
more harm. It was sweet and sort of devilish. It 
tasted of Portland Star Matches. It acted as a niind 
stimulant. You were compelled to show instant im- 
provement or you got squills. Your eye had to be 
brighter and you had to have instant show of the 
breaking out of humours from the blood. 

That v/as the thing — the pimplier you got the more 
good it was doing you. I have seen boys fed on sul- 
phurandmolasses, so broken out that they were simply 
lovely. So hubbly and romantic looking — just as 
though they would be a whole lot better after they got 



266 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

over it. We always felt when taking sulphurandmo- 
lasses as though evil were shooting out of our pores at 
the rate of about ten evils a second. I reckon that I 
got infection out of me when I was a lad, and that, too, 
solely through the agency of sulphurandmolasses, that 
if left in me, might have made me a bank-robber. 

There is much more that I might say. But I refrain 
from committing myself to any general endorsement 
of the remedy as of the present. I suppose that chil- 
dren are different nowadays. I don't suppose that 
there is anything in one of these modern angels com- 
parable to that which broke loose in the spring from 
old-fashioned boys and girls. I suppose that the dear, 
impalpable, disinfected and antiseptic flesh of today's 
immaculate darlings would not respond to sulphurand- 
molasses as it did in the springtime of auld lang syne. 
I don't suppose that you could drive any bad humours 
from the modern blood of youth. Lord knows whether 
there are any such in 'em or not ; I don't. But I know 
that in the olden days by the time the mayflowers 
bloomed and the boys and girls had been given their 
spring bath in the blue tub and the sulphurandmolasses 
eczema had scaled off and the bluebirds were winging 
and ma had put away the sulphur bag for another year 
and we were wearing camphor bags against scarlet 
fever and greased up against the itch, we were pretty 
frisky boys and girls. So here's to ma ! and the spring 
housecleaning of the boys and girls ! 




ON "HAVING A SYSTEM" 

HAVE a system — a filing system, that depends 
altogether on a wide-mouthed steel contrap- 
tion with many divisional compartments, 
each compartment alphabetically marked and 
set off by nickel trimmings. As I look at it 
now in the gathering twilight, it gleams at 
me like the aperto ore of a hungry alligator. 

It was given to me, or rather forced on me, by a 
member of our office force, who has become discour- 
aged. It is her duty to clean up my desk, once in each 
six months, whether it needs it or not, and she has felt 
that my frequent and inconsolable tears at the dis- 
covery of unanswered correspondence and in some 
cases unopened correspondence far beneath the layers 
of newspapers, books, manuscripts and clippings, 
might be alleviated if not altogether suppressed by this 
contrivance, for immediate filing of all matters of im- 
portance. So I have a system, at last. 

For instance, if I receive a letter from the Congress- 
man of our Congressional District whose name happens 
to be Wallace H. White, Jr., at the present time, I can 
at once throw it into the proper compartment and for- 
get it or not. I know where it is. If I should be so 
fortunate as to receive a letter from the Governor of 
our State whose name happens to be Baxter, I can like- 
wise distribute that with a flip as firm and sure as that 
of the railway mail clerk, of the U. S. Postal Depart- 
ment. 

Then when I want to refer to that letter of Con- 
gressman White, I can look for it under the W's for 
"Wallace" or the C's for Congressman or revert to the 



268 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

W's again for "White" or look for it under his wife's 
name which begins with "N." When I want to find the 
Governor's letter for any particular and pressing rea- 
son, I am sure to find it under "B" for Baxter, 
"G" for Governor or "P" for Percy, which happens 
to be his first name and the title by which I always call 
him. When I want to file a report on Taxation by 
Stetson, I can file it under "S" and look for it under 
"T." When I desire to refer to the future of the An- 
droscoggin Bar As3ociation with reference to a recent 
issue between them and Lawyer Crockett, I look for it 
under "A" for Androscoggin, "B" for Bar and "C" for 
Crockett. 

Now here is a case. The yawning jaws of the "sys- 
tem" caught me with a lot of data on a certain Squirrel 
Island Semi-Centennial soon to be given at a famous 
Maine sea-girt isle. I could not file systematically all 
at once so I filed them as I had time. As it happened 
in my system, I filed a lot of them deep into the cav- 
erns of this Efficiency Tomb, under "P" for pageant 
which happened to be an outstanding feature of the 
anniversary, similar to the Plymouth Ter-Centenary 
pageant. Then the next time I came around to it, 
something in the condition of my mind emphasised the 
Island rather than the pageant ; so I filed a bunch under 
**I" for Island and plunk, they dropped into the abyss. 
Then later, feeling the need of concluding the .matter 
of filing, I filed a bunch under "S" for Squirrel, and 
these also struck bottom. And the nexl day in a mo- 
ment of temporary aberration, I filed a series of arti- 
cles for the same purpose under "Q" for Squirrel, and 
there are many under "S" for semi and "C" for cen- 
tennial. 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 269 

I know a man who has a system of filing. If he 
wants to file a clipping he files it with cross references 
and puts a card into the cabinet with every one of 
these various titles capitalized saying see "under X" or 
the letter where the article may really be found. He 
can find an article inside a week every time. This man 
has ten or eleven of these cabinets. When he wants to 
run down a clipping he hires a detective, puts roller 
skates on him and then has daily reports of progress. 

System is one of the best things I know of. There 
was the old story of the man who was kicked down 
seven flights in an office building, by a series of efficient 
floor walkers, who said that he didn't like the hospitality 
but darned if he did not admire their system. System 
has helped a lot of firms to carry on a moderate busi- 
ness at great expense. The ordinary use of a complete 
System is to be able to know a lot of things that you 
never would care to know at only moderate cost for 
the information. For instance, if you wanted to know 
how many postage stamps were used in the week of 
July 15th, 1916, in your business, it might be possible 
to get the information and compare it with the present 
trend of correspondence. System could be invoked that 
would give a complete record of the amount of ink used 
in the business office over a term of years and compare 
it with the spots on the sun, as well as on the office floor. 
System is possible of infinite variety. And nothing is 
so liable to eat off your head. There was a chap who 
was doing a good business with three men and making 
money. He kept his accounts himself in a simple way 
and always knew what he had in the bank and what he 
owed. He hired an efficiency expert; put in an adding 
machine; a comptometer; a dictaphone; two stenog- 
raphers; five roll-top desks, one of them covered with 



270 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

glass and carrying a bouquet culled by the stenog- 
rapher with the yellow hair ; hired an invoice clerk ; put 
in a shipping clerk ; stopped sacking goods himself to 
the freight car; devoted his time to computing aver- 
ages ; and now he is working for sixteen dollars a week 
running an elevator. 

I do not advise burying your correspondent under 
accumulations of extraneous matter; but I can't see 
much gain in my wide-mouthed contraption that hides 
my woes yet more deeply. The system I need is this : 
"Answer correspondence on the day received and file 
the clippings in a bushel basket." 



ON "AN OLD TEXT" 

Y TEXT is in the words of Edward Everett 
Hale. 

I am only one. 
But still I AM one. 
I cannot do EVERYTHING. 
And because I cannot do everything, I will 
not refuse to do the SOMETHING that I CAN do. 

You may ask why I am always preaching these 
things. It is because of this text — an old one that has 
long been familiar. I have felt that the newspaper 
should carry something that pertains to the ethical, 
moral and spiritual life — not all news and not all busi- 
ness. The newspaper is not a commodity to be sold 
over the counter like boots and shoes and groceries. It 
ought to do something else. 

"I am only one! I can't do everything. But still I 
ought to be able to do something." So on we go as the 
mood and the fancy strikes. 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 271 

Many people fail in the world because they think in 
terms of their own littleness. 

Many people could do a great deal more than they 
think, if they only esteemed the somethings a trifle 
higher. 

Joan of Arc was only one. She could not do every- 
thing. But she did something. Savonarola was only 
one, but he did his bit. Lincoln was only one, but he 
was not ashamed to do his something. 

Mr. Roosevelt said to a reporter once that he could 
not do anything very well. He was not a good shot; 
not a good rider ; he played a poor game of tennis ; he 
was not a natural genius as a naturalist; he was not 
an easy writer; he was an average man. "But, by 
George," said he, "I work at being an average man 
harder than the average man does." 

Nobody ever succeeded by discounting his own 
paper. We don't bank that way. We can't begin by 
presaging disaster. 

Cecil Rhodes was only seventeen years old when he 
went to Africa for his health. He was only one. He 
felt that he could do something — not everything; but 
because he could not do everything, he did not refuse 
to try to do his bit. He tried to raise cotton and failed. 
He went with the rush to the diamond fields and 
worked. His health was poor. He worked on. He 
studied nights and went back to England every winter 
to study. He founded a fortune before he was twenty 
years old. He never was without his books. He used 
to say that he felt that it was his duty to do all that 
Cecil Rhodes had in him to do. He never was known 
to refuse to help in any cause for public good or to 
break a contract or in any way shirk the keeping of 
his word. 



272 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

There are scores of true stories of how Rhodes took 
hold of things that others declined. His word was 
"I'll try." He did not say "I am only one and one can't 
do much." His word was: "I am Cecil Rhodes and I 
will do all that Cecil Rhodes can do. I am not afraid 
because I am only one. I can't refuse to do all I can 
do." 

Cecil Rhodes was only one, but he believed in a 
world-wide British Empire and before he was twenty- 
two years of age he had written a will to perpetuate 
his work to that end. He added enormous possessions 
to that Empire. He was called the Empire Builder. 
He never would have a title, the only thing he wanted 
was a degree from Oxford University. He was all 
alone when he began to aspire for it. He accepted it 
when all of England wanted to give it to him and a 
lot more besides. 

You are foolish to think in terms of "only one." Ev- 
ery other man or woman who has gone to the fore, was 
only one. 

You never will get anywhere unless you stop belit- 
tling yourself and settling your hash before it is eaten. 
"I can't do that. I have no talent for that. Others are 
so much abler than I in that work." This is the bane 
of progress. 

Fear is the bane and antidote of success. Fear 
drives us to work; fear of failure drives us to doubt. 
Pride linked with fear is a bad combination. We have 
ruined too many prospects by casting disrespect on so- 
called failures. Fear of failure is at the basis of most 
of this whine : "I'm only one. I can't do everything." 

Courage and joy in life are behind the balance of 
the text. True, I cannot do everything. 




JACK IN THE PULPIT 273 

But I can do something ! 

And because I cannot do everything, I will not re- 
fuse to do the something that I can do. 



ON "RIBBON GRASS" 

N AN old garden, Sunday, a great bed of old- 
fashioned so-called ribbon grass that was so 
common fifty years ago, was whitening a 
patch of ground. Picking a blade, I stuck 
it into my buttonhole and went along. 
Several persons stopped me and asked 
where I got it. All of them were of the elders. One 
lady in a store said: "I have not seen any for many 
years. We used to braid it and make trimming of it 
for our dolls' hats and dresses. I used to think it 
lovely." 

So it is "beautiful" taken in the blade; but hardly 
beautiful as a garden decoration ; for it grows scraggly 
and has no color in the mass — a sort of faded look with 
a tendency to develop into clumps and mat into un- 
sightly patches. But in the blade, it has a striking va- 
riety of combinations of ivory and green running the 
way of the blade. Many of my readers who have not 
seen any for years, will perhaps have hard work to 
recall it to mind. Some of the blades are almost pure 
ivory white ; others are almost all green, but all of them 
are in the finest lines of green and white, as though 
drawn by the minutest of ruling-pens in the most vivid 
of inks, — such is the way of nature. 

Nearly everyone who saw it, recalled old gardens in 
which it had grown and the interest it had for the old- 
fashioned children — of which more later. 



274 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Of course the botanists know what is the name of 
this grass and how it originated. But most of us do 
not care. There are 3500 kinds of grasses and one 
more or less does not matter. They are as many — far 
more — than the races of earth and the blades of grass 
each season transcend, in number, the people who have 
ever lived. They come and go like men and women. 
Walt Whitman called his poems, on the races of men 
and women, on the dreams of the past and of the fu- 
ture, on the endless processions coming and going, 
"Leaves of Grass" and one of his poems he called 
"Calamus," which is the sheaf -like order of grasses like 
the flags or the canes, where groups of them live in the 
common stalk. 

This ribbon grass seems like an effort of nature 
to make the grass decorative; or perhaps man had 
something to do with it, some old-time Burbank who 
played with the pollens. Nature made grasses for all 
sorts of things — grasses to grow in all climates, trop- 
ical, damp and sterile, among the eternal snows. The 
brave grasses are everywhere and they grow to all 
sizes from this green and tender grass that is native to 
New England, to the bamboos that are a hundred feet 
tall. We have grasses that grow in streams and 
grasses that grow by the sea. Grasses have been de- 
vised by nature that will tie the shifting sands together. 
Some are annuals and some are perennials and some 
are so made that they extend their roots far into the 
earth in search of water and tell us where lie the hid- 
den springs. When beaten to the earth by rains they 
have ways of rising from their prone condition by 
their own strength. They have ways of storing water 
and then standing out against drouths. In short, they 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 275 

have so many characteristics of God's providence that 
they preach sermons better than some preachers. 

I fancy that this grass of which I speak with its 
stout and tender stems and its gay colors, is good feed. 
It is of the smallest group of the second series of 
grasses according to classification — the so-called pla- 
laridae, including canary grass, ribbon grass and the 
sweet grasses. Com — or maize, is a brother of the 
grasses, so are sugar-cane, rice, millets. So are oats, 
wheat, rye, barley and other grains. 

Thus a placid contemplation follows the fingering of 
this gay grass as it lies on the table here as I write. 
Little old-fashioned children weaving it into ribbons 
in gardens among rosemary and hollyhocks and other 
sweet old blooms come into mind. Sweep of green 
fields and sounds of the scythe come to the senses. 
Cattle feeding with bent necks and sheep on the pas- 
ture lands, with full barns and chimney-smoke from 
neighbors across wide intervales. The checkered sun- 
light streams through the old gardens and on the stone- 
flagging and makes shadows of the apple blossoms 
gently swaying in May winds. 

But, above all, this grass brings to mind the chil- 
dren, and the women as I have said. It was a brave, 
though fruitless effort to brighten up the corner. It 
was like planting morning-glories and creeping-jinny in 

those old gardens. Other things would pass away 

these would never die. The hand that put this grass 
of which I speak, has been still for more than fifty 
years. The grass endures and comes up each year, 
waiting for children again to braid them into crowns 
for their dolls ; children that never will give them any 
attention ; children that will never come again ; children 




276 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

that forever have forgotten these scenes, are away in 
their automobiles. But the grass keeps on waiting! 



ON "MY ALARM CLOCK" 

HE chanticleer, in the famous play by Rostand, 
was the self-appointed keeper of the house of 
the Sun. His, the responsibility of arousing 
his Lord, the Sun, each morning, lest there 
be no day. With proud crest and clarion 
call, he shrieked the warning in the darkness 
again and again, until at last in obedience to his alarm, 
the sleepy sun crept out of bed and all was well. The 
tragedy of assumptions! They are like toy-balloons 
that float gloriously on their strings, bobbing along 
with us as we go, until something punctures them! 
Like the chanticleer, we shrill our cries lest the sun 
should fail to rise. And then, some day, failing to be 
on guard, by reason of our human weaknesses, we see 
the sun yet rise, the earth yet turn ; the business world 
yet continue to function and all the edicts of the All 
Supreme yet obtain, throughout the universe. 

Yet, there is something in the story of the chan- 
ticleer that is bigger and better than the regularity of 
the sun and its indifference to the cock-crow. It is big- 
ger because it is spiritual; not material. It is big- 
ger because it is volitional ; not mechanical. And that 
bigger "something" is keeping faith with our obliga- 
tions to the world, doing our duty in all things. 

I think of each humanly-exercised function; duty, 
obedience, faith, etc., as cogs in the machine, though it 
is too mean a simile. Each of us must work; not 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 277 

break down. Collectively, the guardians of duty, faith, 
obedience, spirituality, must be sufficient in number to 
offset the inertia of the undutiful, the indifferent and 
the unfaithful. If one of the wheels of life refuses to 
move the chanticleer's call might, if long neglected, be 
followed even by the failure of the sun to rise from 
slumber. It is easily conceivable that failure of the 
spiritual world might occasion the destruction of the 
material world. So the brave old chanticleer that, with 
undimmed faith and lusty call, went forth to his post, 
each dawn, and summoned a sleepy world to its daily 
duties, and sang out his morning prayer of praise and 
thanksgiving, and his call to Service was as great in 
his faith as he would have been had his cry alone made 
possible the day. 

All this consideration comes from the early arousing 
not of a sleepy sun but a sleepy father, by the hundreds 
and hundreds of little birds, sparrows, that inhabit the 
ampelopsis under our windows. The birds are very 
still of nights. They have crawled into little nests, in 
the thick, broad-leafed ivy, and here have their fam- 
ilies, doubtless their neighborhoods, their streets, 
maybe their hotels for strangers and I hope their Y. M. 
C. A.'s for the youngsters. They have my consent to 
the latter. 

At a certain moment before daybreak, they begin to 
stir. A single "cheep" breaks the stillness; a leaf in 
the vine stirs, and some old guardian-sparrow of the 
day pokes out his head from under the leaf that is his 
own especial roof-tree and sniffs the coming of the hour 
when day should break. He wakes his wife, maybe. 
The two — ^they have no clarion to echo the hills and 
call forth response from miles away — arouse the 



278 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

others, for somehow they know that "the day cometh." 
And, little by little, the leaves stir; the one "cheep" 
becomes multiplied into many; the "young ones" 
arouse; the darkness is punctuated by what seems to 
be ten thousand "cheeps" ; the uproar is enormous ; it 
arouses everyone in our house. There is every indi- 
cation of matutinal discipline in the bird-home. 
Things are to be heard that indicate that fledglings are 
being whipped into shape. There are sounds of fulfil- 
ment of duty by parents. 

And so the sparrow even helps to arouse the world. 
So, too, he tries to bring on the day. And he is not 
alone. Like him the birds all sing, like chanticleer, 
long before the daylight streaks the East. You may 
hear them in the forests, in the very darkness before 
the dawn. 

Brave little alarm clocks ! Just a part of the uni- 
verse plan, which begins with Faith, moves through 
Hope and ought to end in the radiance of the sunshine 
of what we call Love, or God. 

We are all in the darkness crying up the Sun. We 
are all stirring in the streaks of light, in the invisible 
and impalpable impulses, through the ether of that 
Other Dawn. We are like the birds, restless and una- 
ware of the reason why. This alarm clock, MY alarm 
clock as I figure it out by way of analogy, is the same 
in relation to that New Day as that which stirs the 
spiritual world — invisible impulses, calls of the Divine 
for us to arouse; to be ready, to fare forth, our souls 
on eager wings, to meet the new light of the East, the 
glory of Heavens that shall mean new duties and 
broader opportunities for all of us. 




ON "AUTUMN IN THE CELLAR" 

HERE is something about going into the cellar 
in the early days of October that gives me a 
sense of falling of the pylorus. A sinking, 
all-gone feeling overtakes me and I would sit 
on the top of the cellar stairs and be one with 
Thebes and Carthage. 
Going into the cellar to look over the furnace and 
perhaps "start up a little lire" is a twin devil to fixing 
up leaks in the roof; painting the back-shed; putting 
out clothes-reels and paying municipal taxes. You get 
nothing out of any one of them but trouble. 

I have just been down cellar. It is all there; only a 
little rustier; a little more ancient, sordid. The fur- 
nace still squats there like an East Indian idol. Its 
upper doors look like eyes in Buddha. Its coal-hole 
door looks like the aperto ore of a hippopotamus. It 
smells like an empty tomato can. 

I can understand why Cain killed Abel. Cain had 
to start up the furnace because Abel refused to tackle 
it. I can understand why Cleopatra embraced the asp. 
It was fall and the palace-furnace was out of order. 
I can understand why Socrates preferred the hemlock 
to the coming of another winter. I can understand 
why Jonah quit the whale. It had something to do with 
whale's cellar. Most of the troubles in life have come 
from cellars — in my opinion. I dislike a cellar more 
than I dislike municipal politics, and that is going 
some. 

There is something about October 1st that is depress- 
ing. It is a lively month on the level ; but subterrane- 
ously, it is a season of sadness. It suggests winter 



280 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

underflannels, winter clothing, winter shoe-laces ; win- 
ter snow-shovels and the cellar furnace. I view my 
furnace always with despair. It always seems to need 
new grates ; new shakers and new hinges. Disuse gets 
at a furnace worse than use. After spring clean-out a 
furnace seems to say to itself "Aha! I will get even. 
I will deteriorate rapidly. I will obsolesce speedily. I 
will age exceedingly. I will go back emphatically." 
And when you slowly approach it October 1st, after a 
summer of gay life with the bees and birds, there the 
materialistic world grabs and enmeshes you and oxi- 
dization overcomes you, and the rust that corrupteth 
discourages you. 

There is no lesson in life so persistent as that of the 
ravages of decay. Nowhere does it so enforce itself as 
in a modern cellar. No, I will not say in a modern cel- 
lar — I will say in a quasi-modern cellar. The truly 
modern cellar is the one that I see pictured in maga- 
zines. It is all white enameled tile with an entrance 
way of arched plastered tile through which streams a 
ray of sunshine. In high embrasured walls, are flow- 
ering plants. This cellar has a library, a smoking 
room, a moving picture theatre, a cabaret and a com- 
fort station with a four-bed hospital and a police sta- 
tion and a garage. It is all split up into sunshiny 
rooms, electrified laundries, coon shouters and jazz 
bands. There is an automat and a phonograph in every 
nook. There are couches and window seats. In the 
far corner is a gold furnace, rustless, automatic, un- 
breakable, self-disposing of ashes, equipped with nickel 
and gold pokers ; diamond handles to the door and jade 
ornaments — a furnace that shovels its own coal, makes 
no ashes; saves so much coal that when the winter is 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 281 

over, you have twice as much as you bought from the 
coal dealer. In front of it is an easy chair ; a box of 
cigars ; a reading lamp ; a foot-rest ; a bath robe and a 
couple of Hawaiian dancers doing the hula-hula. 

This is the modern cellar that I see pictured in the 
current magazines. I am going to have one in the next 
house I build, but at present, I have one much like those 
that most of us seem to possess, where the furnace 
lurks like a rhinoceros in the dimness, seeking to 
spring on you ; where the thermostat refuses to work ; 
where the stove pokers have spines in them to rasp 
your tender hands ; where the shakers are busted ; the 
ash cans leaky and the coal bin a dark and noisome 
pestilence. 

But — life has its compensations. I build a fire. The 
smoke pours from every crevice. It floods the neigh- 
borhood. It routs the swallows. It chokes my bron- 
chial apparatus. But at length, it clears. It buzzes a 
bit. The water sizzles. The steam-cocks respond ; the 
heat resumes in the radiators; the cellar warms up; 
the corners brighten ; the despair gives way to cheer as 
the grate works again and the old last year's furnace 
gloves, donned with repulsion, become once again fa- 
miliar apparel. 

Thus do we resume. Thus the October cellar be- 
comes a part of the daily round and by and by I linger 
here; watch the bright eye of the furnace and rejoice 
in the coming of the days when the snows shall blow, 
the furnace boil and the good old radiators cheer us on 
the way to springs yet remote but sure to come. For 
as sure as I do live and grow wiser, there is good in 
everything and no joy on the heights would be half so 
keen were it not for our occasional trips to the depths — 




282 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

these adventures in the cellars of our lives. For, who- 
so dwelleth forever on mountain tops knoweth not 
glory ; for glory encompasseth him and whatsoever en- 
compasseth one, he seeth not, any more than the fish 
that swims sees the seas, round about him. 



ON "RIDING IN SMOKING CARS" 

T MAY be the time will come when woman may 
ride in smoking cars. 

In fancy, I can see a troop of them push- 
ing on ahead of the men into the smoker, 
tossing their "bunnits" into the racks ; piling 
their grip-sacks into the spaces between the 
seats; shouting "another wanted for bridge" and then 
yanking the old corn-cob pipe out of their reticules, 
scratching a match on the back of their dolmans and 
then squaring away for a good time. The fattest wom- 
an in the whist party will take off her jacket, roll up 
her sleeves, boss the game, spit in the corner, keep 
tally, smoke a cigar with a gold band, coach her part- 
ner and stick her pencil over her ear while she riffles 
the cards. She will let her cigar go out and daintily 
scratch matches where she pleases and will put the 
cigar ashes in her lap. She will talk politics between 
the deals and cuss the administration between her 
clenched teeth. Then she will look into her hand mir- 
ror ; pull a puff out of her reticule and powder her nose. 
The air will be thick and heavy in that smoker, espe- 
cially if it be an evening train, with the lamps burning 
so as to show the smoke. The ladies of the Steam Fit- 
ters Union will get on with their dinner pails and 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 283 

standing in the aisles ask if "Babe got a homer" and 
"who pitched?" They will all be nattily dragging on 
their T.D. pipes smoking the "Spinsters' Delight" or 
the "Lucky Tike" tobacco. They will have their feet 
on the chair rails ahead of them if they are so situated 
and they will "borrow the makings" of the train boys, 
if they have none in their hand-bags. 

It will be no strain of etiquette to extend one's ac- 
quaintance among the fair sex when the women join 
us in the smoker, for the fraternity of the corn-cob is 
established ; the equality of all men behind the briar is 
fixed ; any man will give you a match and the cigarette 
smoker always passes the case or the box as a matter 
of habit. 

All this may be a dream but not so much as formerly. 
Today, the smoker on this train is rather dark and 
gloomy with an odor of departed days and nights. It 
needs something cheerful — sachet and silk. I would 
see fifteen or twerity dames and daughters sitting on 
these now vacant seats, pulling away dreamily on their 
old tobaccy-pipes, T. D.'s, briars, calabashes, meer- 
schaums — especially calabashes. They are so becoming 
to large women. 

Take an "out-size" of calabash for instance (number 
11 stout) and let it down under a broad beaver hat, 
to an ample bust, under which beats somewhere a 
true woman's heart, and I can think of nothing more 
inviting to the mind's eye. 

Consider on the other hand a young woman, slender, 
dressed in half a yard of chiffon and three flounces be- 
low the waist, smoking a meerschaum, beautifully 
carved with likenesses of Dempsey and Carpentier in 
action, and have the stem of the meerschaum trimmed 



284 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

with sash ribbdn to match the hose and I'll say it would 
warm up and enliven this old car a whole lot. 

The trouble with smoking cars is not that people 
smoke in them. It is because they don't really smoke in 
them. They chiefly sit about and scratch matches and 
gloom. They need the spur of society; smoking is a 
social habit. The smoking car will never be what it 
should be, the meeting ground of all fumigators, until 
it is co-educational. We should not permit it to be the 
school of social etiquette for men alone, where they 
may spit crosswise; talk about "hootch" and play 
seven-up and bid-whist for small stakes. It should be 
open to the ladies, to lead them also up to a higher 
plane ; to educate them in the refinements of expector- 
ant conversation; to help them make home what it 
ought to be ; to keep them posted on the latest stories — 
in short, to give them happier hours of travel. 

Why should women have no recourse to these su- 
perior opportunities in this sociological school? Why 
stay in the Pullman car knitting sweaters and thinking 
about gowns? Why not come along with us, join the 
crowd and hear the invigorating uplift of the mascu- 
line debates? Why not be a woman among women! 
Why not ! You would as soon do that — would you — as 
spare your sleepy spouse from his Pullman chair as 
he goes to the smoking room, wondering what makes 
the dear man so drowsy all the time, only to hear his 
merry laugh ten minutes later over the screen of the 
smoking room followed by his eager voice as he says, 
"Here's a good one that I heard the other day." 




ON "COBWEBS" 

OMEWHERE in one of Lord Dunsany's books 
is a chapter about the end of the world — all 
cobwebs. The industrious spider, working 
on and on, prolific, not easily exterminated, 
springing from corruption, weaving in fes- 
toons the final shroud of life. I have not 
read the book for several years. But it is one of those 
impressions we get from unique pictures and I have 
ever since seen some last inhabitant of a dying world, 
if such there might ever be, going into the house of the 
cobwebs, past the seven veils, to bury himself in their 
silences. 

You forget anything and leave it alone for a time 
and the spider is sure to invade it and spin his webs. 

The spider is the only thing that spins from his own 
entrails and gets good results. Man must have mate- 
rial on which to build. He is helpless to create except 
with materials. The spider is the shroud builder of 
earth, the last to work ; so he MUST carry his materials 
with him. 

So, we have to be careful and not permit any of our 
useful possessions or equipment to be neglected. Na- 
ture is remorseless. It takes toll of idleness. 

If you leave your sharp axe out of doors, the spider 
of time dulls its edge with rust. If you leave your 
farm tools out of doors to the weather, the rust ruins 
them. 

Leave a building for a year or so and the doors be- 
gin to fall from the hinges, the window panes become 
mysteriously broken; the blinds begin to sag; the 
bricks in the chimneys begin to fall and the chimney 
itself to lean to the north. 



286 JACK IN THE PULPIT 

Earth marks with ruin its decay. Use is the only 
antidote for cobwebs. Laissez-faire is only a synonym 
for ruin. 

This applies to our minds and bodies and our spir- 
itual existence as well as it applies to our belongings, 
our farm tools, our abandoned farm buildings, the deso- 
late churches in the country, the lonely cabin in the 
woods. 

' Someone asks me why Rotary was started and I tell 
them that one good reason was that it keeps the cob- 
webs out of the garden of neighborliness. A person 
asked me why Rotary was confined to one representa- 
tive only of any given business in a community and I 
could not tell him any more than I could tell him why 
humanity was divided into families. But I could have 
told him why Rotary was started at all. 

It was started because we MUST keep the cobwebs 
off of our humanities ; because we must keep using our 
neighborliness; because we must keep at work at the 
Golden Rule; because we must express happiness in 
terms of friendliness. 

Otherwise spiders come! Otherwise they will spin 
about our souls dusty and stifling webs of death. Oth- 
erwise they will seal up the doors and windows of our 
lives. Otherwise they will make us repelling to en- 
trance of sun and the soft, sweet winds of heaven. 

It is use that works wonders to keep doors open; 
windows washed; floors scrubbed; pans bright along 
the walls ; smoke coming from the chimneys ; lights in 
the window for wayfarers across the dark moors, 
maybe snow-piled or swept by driving rains. 

It is work and use that keep the axe bright and the 
farm tools easy-running and the scjrthe keen in the 



JACK IN THE PULPIT 287 

grass and the stubble. You can't leave your posses- 
sions out in the field and expect them to be comforts to 
you. 

I know a hotel in America where there are twenty or 
thirty rich men who sit about the winter fires and are 
perfectly miserable. They have a round of hotels, that 
they yearly inhabit. They do nothing else and never 
did and never will. They are so unhappy. Nothing is 
bright. All is dull. The cobwebs are there. The 
spider spins. The dust gathers, there is no light out 
of their windows. 

Friends! The call is not for leisure except in the 
serene old age after the work has been done and the 
journey is near the end. The call is for the brisk work 
in the kitchen and the courts of life, for the brush and 
broom against the accumulations of inertia; for the 
creation of something out of the daily toil that tends 
to brighten the light in the window, for the wayfarer. 
Pure leisure and doing nothing are but hastening the 
coming of the spiders that spin the shroud of death. 

The human soul needs watching. Despair never 
comes where the sun shines in upon the clean floor of 
the mind and soul through windows where there are 
no spiders' webs. 



